Force CMake to use static libraries

Question

[Shamelessly cross-posted from the CMake help list]

I\'m trying to create binaries as statically as possible. The fortran code I\'ve got has got X11 and quadmath a

Answer 1

I guess your questions are not that much related, I don't know the answer for all of them.

For your static linking problems, since you're using GCC, you can pass multiple -static and -dynamic flags to it:

set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "-static ${STATIC_LIBS} -dynamic ${EVERYTHING ELSE} -static ${MORE_STATIC_LIBS}")

I don't know why Xaw.a isn't available on your system, probably because the package maintainer of your Linux distribution didn't really make them available.

Also, compiling everything static might make things not compatible between all distros out there and you cripple the ability for others to use improved, up-to-date libraries with your program, it might not be what you want.

If you intend to make a self-contained package of your program, it might be better just to include the shared libraries you used together, like Dropbox and many other proprietary applications do (Humble Bundle games are other example).

Answer 2

I was having a similar problem. Turns out that cmake was implicitly linking against libgfortran and libquadmath. To fix this I put the following in my top level CMakeLists.txt:

unset(CMAKE_Fortran_IMPLICIT_LINK_LIBRARIES)

I could then explicitly link again the libraries using:

SET_TARGET_PROPERTIES(main_f PROPERTIES LINKER_LANGUAGE "C"
  LINK_FLAGS
  "/usr/local/Cellar/gcc/7.1.0/lib/gcc/7/libgfortran.a 
  /usr/local/Cellar/gcc/7.1.0/lib/gcc/7/libquadmath.a -lm -lgcc"
)

The static version of libgfortran is necessary because the shared library also depends on libquadmath. The added "-lm" and "-lgcc" bring in the system dynamic versions of these libraries. On a mac system, you would want to use the full path to your libm.a as well.