static linking only some libraries

Question

How can I statically link only a some specific libraries to my binary when linking with GCC   gcc     -static     tries to statically link all the linked libraries  but I haven t got the static version of some of them  eg  libX11

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There is also -l libstatic1 a  minus l colon  variant of -l option in gcc which can be used to link static library  Thanks to https   stackoverflow com a 20728782   Is it documented  Not in the official documentation of gcc  which is not exact for shared libs too   https   gcc gnu org onlinedocs gcc Link-Options html   -llibrary -l library        Search the library named library when linking   The second alternative with the library as a separate argument is only for POSIX compliance and is not recommended       The only difference between using an -l option and specifying a file name is that -l surrounds library with    lib    and     a    and searches several directories    The binutils ld doc describes it  The -lname option will do search for libname so then for libname a adding lib prefix and  so  if enabled at the moment  or  a suffix  But -l name option will only search exactly for the name specified   https   sourceware org binutils docs ld Options html   -l namespec --library namespec       Add the archive or object file specified by namespec to the list of   files to link  This option may be used any number of times  If   namespec is of the form  filename  ld will search the library path   for a file called filename  otherwise it will search the library path   for a file called libnamespec a       On systems which support shared libraries  ld may also search for   files other than libnamespec a  Specifically  on ELF and SunOS   systems  ld will search a directory for a library called   libnamespec so before searching for one called libnamespec a   By   convention  a  so extension indicates a shared library   Note that   this behavior does not apply to  filename  which always specifies a   file called filename       The linker will search an archive only once  at the location where it   is specified on the command line  If the archive defines a symbol   which was undefined in some object which appeared before the archive   on the command line  the linker will include the appropriate file s    from the archive  However  an undefined symbol in an object appearing   later on the command line will not cause the linker to search the   archive again       See the -  option for a way to force the linker to search archives   multiple times       You may list the same archive multiple times on the command line       This type of archive searching is standard for Unix linkers  However    if you are using ld on AIX  note that it is different from the   behaviour of the AIX linker    The variant -l namespec is documented since 2 18 version of binutils  2007   https   sourceware org binutils docs-2 18 ld Options html

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The problem as I understand it is as follows   You have several libraries  some static  some dynamic and some both static and dynamic   gcc s default behavior is to link  mostly dynamic    That is  gcc links to dynamic libraries when possible but otherwise falls back to static libraries   When you use the -static option to gcc the behavior is to only link static libraries and exit with an error if no static library can be found  even if there is an appropriate dynamic library   Another option  which I have on several occasions wished gcc had  is what I call -mostly-static and is essentially the opposite of -dynamic  the default    -mostly-static would  if it existed  prefer to link against static libraries but would fall back to dynamic libraries   This option does not exist but it can be emulated with the following algorithm    Constructing the link command line with out including -static  Iterate over the dynamic link options  Accumulate library paths  i e  those options of the form -L lt lib dir gt  in a variable  lt lib path gt  For each dynamic link option  i e  those of the form -l lt lib name gt   run the command gcc  lt lib path gt  -print-file-name lib lt lib name gt  a and capture the output  If the command prints something other than what you passed  it will be the full path to the static library   Replace the dynamic library option with the full path to the static library    Rinse and repeat until you ve processed the entire link command line   Optionally the script can also take a list of library names to exclude from static linking   The following bash script seems to do the trick      bin bash  if      -eq 0    then     echo  Usage   0  --exclude  lt lib name gt         lt link command gt   fi  exclude    lib path     while      -ne 0    do     case   1  in         -L               if     1     -L    then                 shift                 LPATH  -L 1              else                 LPATH   1              fi              lib path     LPATH               echo -n     LPATH                             -l               NAME    echo  1   sed  s -l        1                  if echo    exclude        grep    NAME    gt  dev null  then                 echo -n   1               else                 LIB    gcc  lib path -print-file-name lib  NAME  a                   if     LIB     lib  NAME  a    then                     echo -n   1                   else                     echo -n     LIB                     fi             fi                         --exclude              shift             exclude      1                               echo -n   1       esac      shift done  echo   For example   mostlyStatic gcc -o test test c -ldl -lpthread   on my system returns   gcc -o test test c   usr lib gcc x86 64-linux-gnu 4 7          x86 64-linux-gnu libdl a    usr lib gcc x86 64-linux-gnu 4 7          x86 64-linux-gnu libpthread a    or with an exclusion   mostlyStatic --exclude dl gcc -o test test c -ldl -lpthread   I then get   gcc -o test test c -ldl   usr lib gcc x86 64-linux-gnu 4 7          x86 64-linux-gnu libpthread a

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gcc objectfiles -o program -Wl -Bstatic -ls1 -ls2 -Wl -Bdynamic -ld1 -ld2   you can also use  -static-libgcc -static-libstdc   flags for gcc libraries  keep in mind that if libs1 so and libs1 a both exists  the linker will pick libs1 so if it s before -Wl -Bstatic or after -Wl -Bdynamic  Don t forget to pass -L libs1-library-location  before calling -ls1

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You could also use ld option -Bdynamic  gcc  lt objectfiles gt  -static -lstatic1 -lstatic2 -Wl -Bdynamic -ldynamic1 -ldynamic2   All libraries after it  including system ones linked by gcc automatically  will be linked dynamically

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From the manpage of ld  this does not work with gcc   referring to the --static option      You may use this option multiple   times on the command line  it affects   library searching for -l options which   follow it    One solution is to put your dynamic dependencies before the --static option on the command line   Another possibility is to not use --static  but instead provide the full filename path of the static object file  i e  not using -l option  for statically linking in of a specific library  Example     echo  int main        gt  test cpp   c   test cpp  usr lib libX11 a   ldd a out linux-vdso so 1   gt    0x00007fff385cc000  libstdc   so 6   gt   usr lib libstdc   so 6  0x00007f9a5b233000  libm so 6   gt   lib libm so 6  0x00007f9a5afb0000  libgcc s so 1   gt   lib libgcc s so 1  0x00007f9a5ad99000  libc so 6   gt   lib libc so 6  0x00007f9a5aa46000   lib64 ld-linux-x86-64 so 2  0x00007f9a5b53f000    As you can see in the example  libX11 is not in the list of dynamically-linked libraries  as it was linked statically   Beware  An  so file is always linked dynamically  even when specified with a full filename path

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to link dynamic and static library within one line  you must put static libs after dynamic libs and object files  like this    gcc -lssl main o -lFooLib -o main  otherwise  it will not work  it does take me sometime to figure it out

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gcc -lsome dynamic lib code c some static lib a

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Some loaders  linkers  provide switches for turning dynamic loading on and off   If GCC is running on such a system  Solaris - and possibly others   then you can use the relevant option   If you know which libraries you want to link statically  you can simply specify the static library file in the link line - by full path

[gcc] static linking only some libraries

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