[tux3]

I actually wrote a tool a to fix exactly this asymmetry between dynamic libraries (a single object file) and static libraries (actually a bag of loose objects)

I never really advertised it, but what it does is take all the objects inside your static library, and tells the linker to make a static library that contains a single merged object.

https://github.com/tux3/armerge

The huge advantage is that with a single object, everything works just like it would for a dynamic library. You can keep a set of public symbols and hide your private symbols, so you don't have pollution issues.

Objects that aren't needed by any public symbol (recursively) are discarded properly, so unlike --whole-archive you still get the size benefits of static linking.

And all your users don't need to handle anything new or to know about a new format, at the end of the day you still just ship a regular .a static library. It just happens to contain a single object.

I think the article's suggestion of a new ET_STAT is a good idea, actually. But in the meantime the closest to that is probably to use ET_REL, a single relocatable object in a traditional ar archive.

[amluto]

Is there any actual functional difference between the author’s proposed ET_STAT and an appropriately prepared ET_RET file?

For that matter, I’ve occasionally wondered if there’s any real reason you can’t statically link an ET_DYN (.so) file other than lack of linker support.

[tux3]

I think everything that you would want to do with an ET_STAT file is possible today, but it is a little off the beaten path, and the toolchain command line options today aren't as simple as for dynamic libraries (e.g. figuring out how to hide symbols in a relocatable object is completely different on the GNU toolchain, LLVM on Linux, or Apple-LLVM which also supports relocatable objects, but has a whole different object file format).

I would also be very happy to have one less use of the legacy ar archive format. A little known fact is that this format is actually not standard at all, there's several variants floating around that are sometimes incompatible (Debian ar, BSD ar, GNU ar, ...)

[stabbles]

It sounds interesting, but I think it's better if a linker could resolve dependencies of static libraries like it's done with shared libraries. Then you can update individual files without having to worry about outdated symbols in these merged files.

[tux3]

If you mean updating some dependency without recompiling the final binary, that's not possible with static linking.

However the ELF format does support complex symbol resolution, even for static objects. You can have weak and optional symbols, ELF interposition to override a symbol, and so forth.

But I feel like for most libraries it's best to keep it simple, unless you really need the complexity.