LibLocator is a Linux API for locating shared-library files and their parent directories in the filesystem. Optionally, a specific library version can be speicified
The use case that led to its development is as follows: A library needs to locate various supporting data files, either those that it defined or those used by the libraries it is linked with, such as a time-zone databased used by boost_date_time or a definitions file for a protocol parser. Since it's a library it cannot assume to have access to argv[0]. Instead of making the library's user inform it where the files are placed, I prefer to make them part of its deployment, and place them known file-system paths relative to the library's on shared-object file. The library provides a simple API that accomplishes this on Linux.
Specifically, when the application is dynamically linked with multiple versions of the same library (a real use-case I have to deal with), it's possible to to request the path of a specific version.
See the included main.cpp for usage examples
Pre-requisites:
- boost_system and boost_filesystem libraries. on Ubuntu Linux they can be installed using: sudo apt-get install libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-system-dev
- g++ that supports C++ 11, such as g++ 4.8.2 that comes with Ubuntu 14.04. Alternatively the code can be trivially ported to C++ 03.
the inclided build.sh will compile the code and produce a binary named 'demo'