Building a library is much like building a program. In this case, the
name of the primary is LIBRARIES. Libraries can be installed in
libdir or pkglibdir.
See Building a Shared Library, for information on how to build shared
libraries using Libtool and the LTLIBRARIES primary.
Each _LIBRARIES variable is a list of the libraries to be built.
For instance, to create a library named libcpio.a, but not install
it, you would write:
noinst_LIBRARIES = libcpio.a libcpio_a_SOURCES = ...
The sources that go into a library are determined exactly as they are
for programs, via the _SOURCES variables. Note that the library
name is canonicalized (see How derived variables are named), so the _SOURCES
variable corresponding to libcpio.a is ‘libcpio_a_SOURCES’,
not ‘libcpio.a_SOURCES’.
Extra objects can be added to a library using the
library_LIBADD variable. This should be used for objects
determined by configure. Again from cpio:
libcpio_a_LIBADD = $(LIBOBJS) $(ALLOCA)
In addition, sources for extra objects that will not exist until
configure-time must be added to the BUILT_SOURCES variable
(see Built Sources).
Building a static library is done by compiling all object files, then
by invoking ‘$(AR) $(ARFLAGS)’ followed by the name of the
library and the list of objects, and finally by calling
‘$(RANLIB)’ on that library. You should call
AC_PROG_RANLIB from your configure.ac to define
RANLIB (Automake will complain otherwise). You should also
call AM_PROG_AR to define AR, in order to support unusual
archivers such as Microsoft lib. ARFLAGS will default to
cr; you can override this variable by setting it in your
Makefile.am or by AC_SUBSTing it from your
configure.ac. You can override the AR variable by
defining a per-library maude_AR variable (see Program and Library Variables).
Be careful when selecting library components conditionally. Because building an empty library is not portable, you should ensure that any library always contains at least one object.
To use a static library when building a program, add it to
LDADD for this program. In the following example, the program
cpio is statically linked with the library libcpio.a.
noinst_LIBRARIES = libcpio.a libcpio_a_SOURCES = ... bin_PROGRAMS = cpio cpio_SOURCES = cpio.c ... cpio_LDADD = libcpio.a