Re: v2: gcc and static linking

From: Andre Hentz (ahentz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-09-13 10:55:04

Vladimir Prus wrote:
> Hi Andre,
> 
> 
>>How do I force a library to be linked statically with gcc? By looking at
>>gcc.jam, it seems that <find-static-library> does not enforce static
>>linking.
> 
> 
> Right, not anymore, because I'm completely unsure how this can be reasonably 
> done. I've a couple of question to you:
> 
> 1. Why do you need static linking to a specific library?

I need a few wrapper programs to link statically against libstdc++ (or 
libsup++). It is part of the specification that they may run on a system 
where libstdc++.so is not present.

> 2. One approach is to use:
> 
> g++ ..... -Wl,-Bstatic -lwhatever
> 
> however this will fail if there's no static version of whatever. Also, there's 
> assymentry with:
> 
> g++ ..... -Wl,-Bshared -lwhatever
> 
> which will link to whatever.so if present, but will also link with whatever.a, 
> not fail. Is the '-Bstatic' behaviour what you're after? I'm a bit worried by 
> its platform-specificity.

Yes, that's what I have in mind. If I use <find-static-library>, I 
expect it to fail if there's no libwhatever.a. In fact, -Bstatic is 
linker-specific, not platform-specific. That is also the case for 
"-Wl,-R", "-Wl,-h", "-Wl,-rpath-link" and "-Wl,--strip-all". I'm 
updating my BB setup and haven't got to solaris yet but I believe 
--strip-all is going to cause problems. -rpath-link is also potentialy 
problematic but I'm not using it so it's not a biggie.

Perhaps we could configure gcc.jam to use a specific set of linker 
options, like:

using gcc : 3.3 : <linker>sun ;

> While we discuss this, you can use
> 
> <linkflags>"-Wl,-Bstatic -lwhatever"
> 
> to make your project work.
>

I'll try that.

> - Volodya
>