[linux] Static link of shared library function in gcc

How can I link a shared library function statically in gcc?

This question is related to linux gcc

The answer is


If you want to link, say, libapplejuice statically, but not, say, liborangejuice, you can link like this:

gcc object1.o object2.o -Wl,-Bstatic -lapplejuice -Wl,-Bdynamic -lorangejuice -o binary

There's a caveat -- if liborangejuice uses libapplejuice, then libapplejuice will be dynamically linked too.

You'll have to link liborangejuice statically alongside with libapplejuice to get libapplejuice static.

And don't forget to keep -Wl,-Bdynamic else you'll end up linking everything static, including libc (which isn't a good thing to do).


A bit late but ... I found a link that I saved a couple of years ago and I thought it might be useful for you guys:

CDE: Automatically create portable Linux applications

http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html

  • Just download the program
  • Execute the binary passing as a argument the name of the binary you want make portable, for example: nmap

    ./cde_2011-08-15_64bit nmap

The program will read all of libs linked to nmap and its dependencias and it will save all of them in a folder called cde-package/ (in the same directory that you are).

  • Finally, you can compress the folder and deploy the portable binary in whatever system.

Remember, to launch the portable program you have to exec the binary located in cde-package/nmap.cde

Best regards


If you have the .a file of your shared library (.so) you can simply include it with its full path as if it was an object file, like this:

This generates main.o by just compiling:

gcc -c main.c

This links that object file with the corresponding static library and creates the executable (named "main"):

gcc main.o mylibrary.a -o main

Or in a single command:

gcc main.c mylibrary.a -o main

It could also be an absolute or relative path:

gcc main.c /usr/local/mylibs/mylibrary.a -o main

In gcc, this isn't supported. In fact, this isn't supported in any existing compiler/linker i'm aware of.


Yeah, I know this is an 8 year-old question, but I was told that it was possible to statically link against a shared-object library and this was literally the top hit when I searched for more information about it.

To actually demonstrate that statically linking a shared-object library is not possible with ld (gcc's linker) -- as opposed to just a bunch of people insisting that it's not possible -- use the following gcc command:

gcc -o executablename objectname.o -Wl,-Bstatic -l:libnamespec.so

(Of course you'll have to compile objectname.o from sourcename.c, and you should probably make up your own shared-object library as well. If you do, use -Wl,--library-path,. so that ld can find your library in the local directory.)

The actual error you receive is:

/usr/bin/ld: attempted static link of dynamic object `libnamespec.so'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

Hope that helps.