trouble linking ... I don't see any .a files

[fsbo.c...@gmail.com]

So I'm pretty new to C++ programming. I'm experienced in python and would use the C Api from Python but it looks like it requires use of a dll file which is only on windows and I have a mac. 

I am trying to follow the direction: "Program must be linked to tesseract-ocr library and leptonica library."

and am having trouble because I don't know what to link to. My understanding is the file to link to will be a .a file? I don't see any .a files associated with tesseract. 

I've got tesseract working from command line, but can't get it working in the context of my XCode C ++ project.

Thanks you very much for taking a glance at this basic question!!