How To Find Out What A Library Does?
 

Hi,

I have been puzzled by a problem related to dynamic linking and relocating. I have a program which uses dynamically linked libraries, I can check what those libraries are using ldd, but I don't know exactly what each library is for. Some of them I can figure out from the name. Also, there are issues related to versions, for example, my program links libpthread.so.0, that is for posix-thread, and it is a link pointing to libpthread-0.10.so. Looks to me that "0.10" is something related to version, but how can I find out 1) what program installed this library; 2) which version of that program installed this specific version of libpthread? Is there any general website about all the libraries? The reason I need to find out which program/version installed the library is that if somebody is missing that library on their machine, I can then direct them to install that specific program. Thanks a lot for your help.

To make the thing clear, the way the libraries are used is "shared libraries", not the "dynamically loaded" libraries. Didn't think about it when used the phrase "dynamically linked".