David F <smu### [at] ameritechnet> wrote:
: ok, I tried downloading it, and when I extracted it, and tryied compiling 
: it, I don't get a file libglut.so.3.7, but it does generate a libglut.a   
: Are these the same?  Can I just rename it

  No, you can't rename a '.a' file to a '.so' file. It's like trying to rename
a '.pdf' file to '.doc' (yes, they are both a document format, but completely
different).
  You can link the '.a' file to the program, but it links it statically (thus
increasing the size of the binary). Sometimes this is desirable, though (the
binary is not dependant on the exitense of the original library as it comes
inside the binary itself).
  The library you are building has probably some option to create the dynamic
version (ie the '.so' file), so try searching for it.
  There's also a way to convert a '.a' file to a '.so' file (IIRC it requires
extracting all the object files from inside the '.a' and then building the
'.so' from them). However, it *might* not always work (sometimes building
a dynamic library requires a special flag to the compiler which creates the
object files in such a way that they will work in a dynamic library, ie. the
compiler generates position-independent code, which is not necessary for a
statically linked library).

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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