Statically linking libraries in MinGW

Question

Suppose I have three C source files. The first two to be LIBs (lib*.a?), and the third is an application which uses them.

The first is (re.c):

int re(int i) {
    return i;
}

The second is (test.c):

int re(int); // Depends on re.c

int test(int i) {
    return re(i);
}

And the third is (main.c):

#include<stdio.h>

int test(int); // Uses test.c

int main(void) {

    printf("%d\n",test(0));
    return 0;
}

Now how can I create the first two LIBs in such a way that allows me to statically link them later with main application?

I know how to create the DLLs and link them dynamically in my application such as:

cc -o re.dll re.c -shared -Wl,--out-implib=libre.a (for re.c)

cc -o test.dll test.c -L. -lre -shared -Wl,--out-implib=libtest.a (for test.c)

cc -o main.exe main.c -L. -lre -ltest

---

So how to create equivalent LIBs to be statically linked within my executable binary in MinGW, and how to link them?

Obviously, under Windows :)

Answer 1

Have you tried using the options: -static -mwindows

Answer 2

I found the solution here: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/84461/MinGW-Static-and-Dynamic-Libraries

The idea being is to compile all libraries (source files) without linking. Then converting the output objects with ar rcs -o lib*.a *.o where * is the name of objects created (converting them one by one). After that, we simply compile the application with -L. to specify the directory and with -l* to specify libraries names without GNU naming decoration.

For those libs which depends on others, they should be specified first and then the referenced libs, or else errors such as undefined reference to re will occur when I did -lre -ltest, where -ltest -lre is the right one, because test library refers to re library.

Here is how I compiled it:

cc -c -o test.o re.c

cc -c -o re.o re.c

ar rcs -o libtest.a test.o

ar rcs -o libre.a re.o

cc -o main.exe main.c -L. -ltest -lre

It also works for Tiny C Compiler.

Answer 3

Adding to Ghasan's answer. (It is possible to build it static if all the %.a files and object files are available)

Most of the libraries in mingw are static as I can see in the lib/ directory(all %.a file). In my case the shared-dependencies are only the libstd++-6.dll and libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll which are not there in static library at all.

I was unable to run my executable without those two shared-libraries. As the description reads,

This is freely redistributable library; it is required by, (and you must distribute it with), any application compiled by the GNU C++ language compiler, unless support for shared runtime libraries is explicitly disabled when building.