[Wowfunhappy]

Pretty please, tell me how to compile static binaries and I’ll do that forever. I always end up with certain external libraries still being required.

[hctaw]

You need to compile a static executable (not with static libraries, there's a subtle difference). The flags depend on your compiler.

If you're on Linux, musl libc and musl-tools are useful for dealing with this reliably.

[a1369209993]

> You need to compile a static executable

This is functionally impossible on $ISA-linux-gnu, because the glibc developers refuse to provide a working C standard library (libc.a).

> musl libc and musl-tools are useful

Sure, but if the software worked (/reliably) with musl, we'd be using that already.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Step 3b is to make sure you don't use libraries that themselves cannot be fully statically linked (hello, GTK!).

It's cool that they use run-time dynamic loading to "modularize" certain features (such as image loading), but it seriously damages the benefits of static linkage.

[nh2]

GTK can be statically linked.

Example executable:

https://github.com/nh2/static-haskell-nix/releases/tag/c-sta...

It lost this ability temporarily when switching to Meson, but I fixed it in GTK3 and GTK4. But I just checked and apparently it is broken again:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3774#note_109746...

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Oh, that's right. There's some option to build all modules as static libs or include them in the main .a ... sorry, I forgot about that.

Did GTK3 or GTK4 ever become relocatable on Linux?

[nh2]

Well, looks like you just turned right:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/3519#not...

[jart]

Use Cosmopolitan Libc. Everything is statically linked. See for example https://justine.lol/redbean/index.html don't you want binaries like that?