Re: question about "invalid string offset" & "could not read symbols: Malformed archive" linker errors (fwd)

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Roger,

> We built the libxvtmapi.a ourselves.  Yes, I've tried deleting it and 
> rebuilding but I still get the file format not recognized error message.  
>   
> The build procedure seems to work fine otherwise, though there are some 
> warning messages.  That said, I haven't seen any warning messages that 
> seem to be related to this issue.
>   
[If all else fails, try fixing the warnings anyway... :-)]
> address@hidden testapp]$ objdump -p 
> outdir/debug/libxvtxmapi.a 
> In archive outdir/debug/libxvtxmapi.a:
> objdump: tapp.o: File format not recognized
> objdump: outdir/debug/libxvtxmapi.a: Malformed archive
>   
This is the cause of the problem - the tapp.o file is not recognized.  
One possible cause for this is that the compiler used to build the 
tapp.o file is targeted at one particular processor type and the 
binutils (including objdump and the linker) are targeted at a different 
system type.  To check this have a look at the output of "objdump 
--help" and compare the supported  targets list with  the  target 
displayed as part of the output of "gcc --verbose".

> Here is the tapp.o file:
>
> address@hidden testapp]$ find . -name tapp.o
> ./xvtdsp55/linux_x86/src/ptk/CMakeFiles/xvtxmapid.dir/tapp.o
What does "objdump -p tapp.o" report ?  Is it still unrecognized ?  (If 
not then this is very worrying.  It would mean that placing the tapp.o 
file into the libxvtxmapi.a archive has corrupted it).

How was tapp.o built ?  (Ie what was the command line used to compile it 
and to assemble it).

Cheers
 Nick