Much of the dynamic section of shared libraries could just be translated to a metadata file as part of a static library. It's not breaking: the linker skips files in archives that are not object files.
binutils implemented this with `libdep`, it's just that it's done poorly. You can put a few flags like `-L /foo -lbar` in a file `__.LIBDEP` as part of your static library, and the linker will use this to resolve dependencies of static archives when linking (i.e. extend the link line). This is much like DT_RPATH and DT_NEEDED in shared libraries.
It's just that it feels a bit half-baked. With dynamic linking, symbols are resolved and dependencies recorded as you create the shared object. That's not the case when creating static libraries.
But even if tooling for static libraries with the equivalent of DT_RPATH and DT_NEEDED was improved, there are still the limitations of static archives mentioned in the article, in particular related to symbol visibility.
binutils implemented this with `libdep`, it's just that it's done poorly. You can put a few flags like `-L /foo -lbar` in a file `__.LIBDEP` as part of your static library, and the linker will use this to resolve dependencies of static archives when linking (i.e. extend the link line). This is much like DT_RPATH and DT_NEEDED in shared libraries.
It's just that it feels a bit half-baked. With dynamic linking, symbols are resolved and dependencies recorded as you create the shared object. That's not the case when creating static libraries.
But even if tooling for static libraries with the equivalent of DT_RPATH and DT_NEEDED was improved, there are still the limitations of static archives mentioned in the article, in particular related to symbol visibility.