Linux and other Unix-likes have a standard for this: if you want to link against libfoo, you pass `-lfoo`. The standard linker knows to expand that to some vari

Linux and other Unix-likes have a standard for this: if you want to link against libfoo, you pass `-lfoo`. The standard linker knows to expand that to some variant of libfoo, whether static or dynamic, with additional versioning, etc. If libfoo isn't in a standard library search path (e.g. it's being built in a `./vendor/` directory), then you need to additionally tell the linker that with `-Lvendor -lfoo`. There's also a lot of silly memorization involved (e.g. remembering that zlib is usually packaged as `libz` so you need `-lz`, remembering that the non-SSL parts of OpenSSL are `-lcrypto`, etc.). C programmers tend to build mental scar tissue around these things and forget how pointlessly complicated and friction-inducing they are.