Quote Originally Posted by _perza View Post
What do the LIBS options -L and -l actually do? Are there some docs on these somewhere?
Sure there are. -L tells the compiler where to look for libraries and -l tells it which libraries to link against. Those are standard gcc switches.

Somehow the original lib and a small test app started working in simulator, but when trying to build the exactly same app for Symbian device I get the following error message:

:-1: error: Recipe linkandpostlink failed with exit code 1.

.... with tens of lines unrelated compiler messages, and finally...

undefined reference to `MyLib::MyLib()

indicating that compiler can not find the library functions. I have build both the library and the application to the same Symbian^3 target, as far as I understand.
Hard to say what you did or did not do, especially if you are not sure yourself what you did Please provide more info and post your .pro files.

Using libraries in this environment feels ridiculously complicated
It's not complicated. It just requires you to do some things conciously.
Any ideas what might be wrong?
You are either not building the libraries properly or didn't provide proper information to the linker to find your library.