Linking static libraries with '-l'

[Mike Meyer]

In <8e96a0b90612200301l467b2688j157071f205685e7 at mail.gmail.com>, mal content <artifact.one at googlemail.com> typed:
> Hi.
> 
> So, if I want to link to the shared library /usr/local/libxyz.so, I
> simply add '-lxyz'
> to my program link commands. But what if I want to link to the equivalent
> static library?
> 
> The GCC manual says:
> 
>        -static
>               On  systems  that support dynamic linking, this prevents linking
>               with the shared libraries.  On other systems, this option has no
>               effect.
> 
> This is unsuitable as it will obviously compile in EVERYTHING statically,
> including the system libc.
> 
> How come there's no (obvious) portable way to link to static libraries? The
>  '-l' method is "portable" because the Makefile doesn't need to know the suffix
> used for shared libraries on any particular platform (so on FreeBSD, dylib on
> Darwin, sl on HP-UX, dll on Windows, and most likely more). However, to link
> against static libs, the only option appears to be to do:
>
>   cc -o myprog myprog.o /usr/local/libxyz.a
> 
> The static library must be specified by full path, using the '.a'
> suffix - obviously
> contains potential portability problems in the event of a platform not using
> the '.a' suffix (although I've not actually seen any to date) -
> because otherwise
> the existence of libxyz.so will cause a program that uses '-l' to link against
> the dynamic library instead of the static.
> 
> Is there a better way?

I'd try using ld with the "-r -static" flags to do a partial link with
just the stuff you want statically linked, then a second ld (or maybe
cc?) step to create the executable with everything else linked in
shared.

I haven't tried it, so I don't know that it will work. You may need to
add extra flags to get ld to not include things in the static link as
well. Check the ld man page for lots more info.

	<mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.