Linker won't find shared libraries no matter what i tell it.

[magicmouse]

The linker is not obeying the commands to find some shared libraries.

I am trying to compile a C project in MS Visual Studio Code on Centos 7. THe shared libraries are located in /usr/lib64. I can't seem to get the compiler to swallow my loader options in the cpp command line. No matter whether i specify the paths explicitly, or add the .so suffix, etc. , no matter what i do to my tasks.json file, i get loader errors saying "/usr/bin/ld: Cannot find -lllibpthread", etc.

Here is my tasks.json file:

{
    "tasks": [
        {
            "type": "cppbuild",
            "label": "C/C++: gcc build active file",
            "command": "/usr/bin/gcc",
            "args": [
                "-std=c99",
                "-g",
                "${fileDirname}/*.h",
                "${fileDirname}/*.c",
                "-o",
                "${fileDirname}/${fileBasenameNoExtension}",
                "-L/usr/lib64/",
                "-llibpthread",
                "-llibpcap"
            ],
            "options": {
                "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}"
            },
            "problemMatcher": [
                "$gcc"
            ],
            "group": {
                "kind": "build",
                "isDefault": true
            },
            "detail": "Task generated by Debugger."
        }
    ],
    "version": "2.0.0"
}

[vscodebot]

(Experimental duplicate detection)
Thanks for submitting this issue. Please also check if it is already covered by an existing one, like:

• why ${fileDirname} in tasks.json with wrong replacement? (#110454)

[magicmouse]

I resolved this problem by fixing my .json file. It would be helpful the getting started documentation included an example of linking to a shared library.

The correction JSON is as follows:

            "args": [
                "-std=c99",
                "-g",
                "${fileDirname}/*.h",
                "${fileDirname}/*.c",
                "-L/usr/lib64/",
                "-lpthread",
                "-lpcap",
                "-o",
                "${fileDirname}/${fileBasenameNoExtension}"

In this case you specify the folder to the libraries by doing -L with the path /usr/lib64. To include the libpcap.so shared library on linux, you specify -lpcap, omitting the 'lib' prefix, and the '.so' suffix. Very confusing to a beginning.