why does i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -static fail?

[Ken Brown]

On 12/19/2020 2:37 AM, Lee via Cygwin wrote:
> On 12/18/20, Brian Inglis wrote:
>> On 2020-12-17 20:45, Lee via Cygwin wrote:
>>> Would someone please explain why adding "-static" makes
>>> i686-w64-mingw32-gcc fail?
>>>
>>> This works (or at least the compiler doesn't complain)
>>>
>>> $ i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -o a.exe         conftest-pcre.c -lpcreposix
>>> -lpcre
>>>
>>> This does not work
>>>
>>> $ i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -o a.exe -static conftest-pcre.c -lpcreposix
>>> -lpcre
>>> /usr/lib/gcc/i686-w64-mingw32/10/../../../../i686-w64-mingw32/bin/ld:
>>> cannot find -lpcreposix
>>> /usr/lib/gcc/i686-w64-mingw32/10/../../../../i686-w64-mingw32/bin/ld:
>>> cannot find -lpcre
>>> collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
>>>
>>> Why does adding "-static" make it fail?
>>
>> Because the mingw64-*86*-pcre/2 packages provide only dynamic libraries and
>> their linkage archives:
>       <.. snip list of libpcre*.dll and .dll.a files ..>
>> where others provide both dynamic and static libraries e.g.
>> mingw64-i686-zstd:
>>
>> usr/i686-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/bin/libzstd-1.dll
>> usr/i686-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/lib/libzstd.a
>> usr/i686-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/lib/libzstd.dll.a
>>
>> possibly where the size of useful library members are reasonably small
>> enough,
>> and unlikely to need significantly updated, to be statically linked into an
>> standalone executable or embedded system component, that itself may be
>> regularly
>> updated, rather than requiring large chunks of a framework to be linked that
>> may need regular updates.
> 
> Thanks for the explanation :)
> 
> I went looking to see how the mingw pcre package was built and ended up here:
>    https://cygwin.com/git-cygwin-packages/?p=git/cygwin-packages/mingw64-i686-pcre.git;a=summary
> 
> If that's correct and the latest then it looks to be a bit out of
> date; the current release is 8.44
>    https://ftp.pcre.org/pub/pcre/

The maintainer has retired from Cygwin package maintenance, so it's not likely 
to be updated until someone volunteers to take over.

> Looking at the latest cygport info
>    https://cygwin.com/git-cygwin-packages/?p=git/cygwin-packages/mingw64-i686-pcre.git;a=blob;f=mingw64-i686-pcre.cygport;h=7456c41e6c45aad8403303aee413144fcf5d1b58;hb=3200774765aabbdda5cf4e5e9934c3d25e6e7196
> 
> and going off the current pcre doc included with the 8.44 tarball:
>   The Autotools PCRE building process uses libtool to build both shared
> and static libraries by default. You can suppress one of these by
> adding one of
> 
>    --disable-shared
>    --disable-static
> 
> to the configure command, as required.
> 
> The cygport info doesn't have "--disable-static" so maybe not having
> static libraries wasn't an intentional omission??

No, it's intentional.  cygport itself supplies "--disable-static".  See 
/usr/share/cygport/cygclass/autotools.cygclass:715:

   confargs+=" --enable-shared --disable-static"

The cygport user (i.e., the package maintainer) would have to add 
"--enable-static" to override this.

Ken