On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 10:25 AM Arsen Arsenović <ar...@gentoo.org> wrote: > Madhu <enom...@meer.net> writes: > > systemd-udev cannot be built as a static binary again presumably a > > carefully thought out design decision behind its design and > > philosophy. > > Since static linking is seldom a good idea, it is more likely that > simply nobody bothered. I don't recall any udev components in systemd > v249 (which is the version I attempted to rebase eudev on top of) which > can't be static linked.
The main issue is symbol conflicts with several major projects. systemd makes careful use of ELF symbol visibility (hidden symbols) to prevent conflicts when libudev or libsystemd are linked with other projects. As I understand it, it is up to the linker to apply any visibility rules. This doesn't work for static libs since the linker isn't actually involved in their creation. A static library is really just an archive with a bunch of unlinked ELF objects. Since the symbol visibility rules are not applied, attempting to link against libudev.a or libsystemd.a leads to symbol conflicts in packages like LVM2 and cryptsetup. There are some Gentoo bug reports about this, but I can't find them immediately. The systemd project (upstream) has chosen not to work around these conflicts by renaming symbols, and instead chooses not to support static linking at all. They see static libs as being defective by design. If the symbol visibility issue could be resolved at the toolchain level, they would probably be more willing to support it.
