[cryptonector]

It's not that .a files and static linking are a relic, but that static linking never evolved like dynamic linking did. Static linking is stuck with 1978 semantics, while dynamic linking has grown features that prevent the mess that static linking made. There are legit reasons for wanting static linking in 2025, so we really ought to evolve static linking like we did dynamic linking.

Namely we should:

  - make -l and -rpath options in
    .a generation do something:
    record that metadata in the .a

  - make link-edits use that meta-
    data recorded in .a files in
    the previous item

I.e., start recording dependency metadata in .a files and / so we can stop flattening dependency trees onto the final link-edit.

This will allow static linking to have the same symbol conflict resolution behaviors as dynamic linking.