self-contained

中文

Description

Dynamic linking is an unavoidable topic in native development. Even if you can ensure static linking for third-party libraries, the system's libc version can still be a major obstacle (musl libc can be used as an alternative approach).

• Running programs compiled with newer versions on older Linux distributions may report errors like GLIBC_XXX not found or GLIBCXX_XXX not found
• Software that runs normally during development may report load shared object no such file errors after deployment

These are common dynamic linking dependency issues.

Self-contained means the application bundles all required dependencies for execution. This project helps developers package their binary executables as self-contained bundles to resolve dynamic linking dependencies.

Usage

Given a binary executable a.out, generate a self-contained directory using:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xuges/selfcontained/refs/heads/main/make-selfcontained
chmod +x make-selfcontained
./make-selfcontained a.out

After successful execution, a selfcontained directory will be created:

selfcontained/
├── bin
│   ├── ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
│   └── a.out
├── lib
│   ├── libc.so.6
│   ├── libgcc_s.so.1
│   ├── libm.so.6
│   └── libstdc++.so.6
└── run.sh

Explanation:

• bin stores a copy of the input a.out and dynamic link interpreter
• lib contains all dynamically linked dependencies (including libc)
• run.sh is the execution script for a.out (filename can be modified, but path must remain unchanged)

After generating the selfcontained directory, you may add other runtime resources. The directory name selfcontained can be modified.

Note:

• If using dlopen to dynamically load shared libraries, you must manually manage the shared library files.
• The working directory when launching the program with run.sh is the bin directory.

Mechanism

The make-selfcontained script itself searches for the shared libraries required by the target executable, copies them along with the dynamic linker to the selfcontained directory, and modifies the dynamic linker path in the copied executable. The generated run.sh script sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH before execution, ensuring the executable prioritizes the bundled ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 and all subsequent shared libraries, including libc, from its own directory.

Reference:
https://www.cnblogs.com/pengdonglin137/p/17623177.html https://www.bytezonex.com/archives/Ivbb0Uz6.html

Dependencies

The make-selfcontained script requires:

ldd
readelf