[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, ...)