Re: Building all static

[Bruce Korb]

"Gary V. Vaughan" wrote:

> Are these assumptions good?
> 
>   i) people who specify -static to libtool don't want to link against
>      any dynamic libraries, and are suprised that isn't actually the case.
>  ii) the -static option is not used to mean `link static libtool libraries,
>      and dynamic otherwise' in many shipping packages.
> 
> If not, then maybe we need a third type of static linking in libtool, that
> links statically where possible, except if no static lib is available (-ldl?).
> But thats what I expect -all-static to do now, and I think it should be
> called -static...

``-static'' needs to imply the common and ordnary meaning of ``static''.
"libtool" is a less common and ordinary command than either "gcc" or "ld".
It is not a directly obvious thing that you would need to add the qualifier
"all-" to it in order to actually get static linking.

Being obvious is far more important than compatibility for the few users who:

1.  use -static
2.  don't want fully static
3.  would have a hard time coping with the change

:-)  Cheers - Bruce