Re: Building all static

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Bill Moseley wrote on Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 03:33:02PM CET:
> On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 12:39:10PM +0000, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
> > $ libtool --help --mode=link | grep static
> >   -all-static       do not do any dynamic linking at all
> >   -static           do not do any dynamic linking of libtool libraries

If you do that with branch-2-0, give some weeks before the
then-uncovered bugs have settled.  (I'm just thinking that without
further changes all tests are going to test something different now :-)
Besides, it's a clear change of published interface (this doesn't mean
I'm for or against the change.  Just needs to be marked VERY VERY big.
Users of former Libtool-type `-static' will need to use
  libtool --version
in order to differentiate old and new behavior, and so on.  Ugly.
How many packages/people use this?  How many people have called other
autotools names because of interface changes?)

> 
> > > 2) Is there a "standard" way to run configure that should build a
> > > completely static binary?
> > 
> > Assuming libtool is doing all your linking:
> > 
> > ./configure LDFLAGS='-all-static'
> 
> $ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/static LD_FLAGS='-all-static' >/dev/null && make 
> install >/dev/null 

Is that a mail-only typo?  You used LD_FLAGS instead of LDFLAGS.
But then, configure will most likely fail soon, before libtool is even
involved -- the compiler will see -all-static and barf.
There's been discussion about this on this list about Libtool-specific
environment variables and -Xlinker stuff.  However, I do not know a
general approach to your setting.  I'd just do
  configure LDFLAGS=-static
  make LDFLAGS=-all-static
but that's obviously a hack.

A general solution to this problem is needed.

*big snip*
> 
> > Unless someone shouts me down, then according to the principle of least
> > surprise, I'm inclined to change the semantics to:
> > 
> >   -static       do not do any dynamic linking at all
> >   -lt-static    do not do any dynamic linking of libtool libraries
> 
> As long as "libtool libraries" is clear.

Well, the term is defined in the manual.

Regards,
Ralf