why does i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -static fail?

[Lee]

On 12/18/20, Brian Inglis wrote:
> On 2020-12-17 20:45, Lee via Cygwin wrote:
>> Would someone please explain why adding "-static" makes
>> i686-w64-mingw32-gcc fail?
>>
>> This works (or at least the compiler doesn't complain)
>>
>> $ i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -o a.exe         conftest-pcre.c -lpcreposix
>> -lpcre
>>
>> This does not work
>>
>> $ i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -o a.exe -static conftest-pcre.c -lpcreposix
>> -lpcre
>> /usr/lib/gcc/i686-w64-mingw32/10/../../../../i686-w64-mingw32/bin/ld:
>> cannot find -lpcreposix
>> /usr/lib/gcc/i686-w64-mingw32/10/../../../../i686-w64-mingw32/bin/ld:
>> cannot find -lpcre
>> collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
>>
>> Why does adding "-static" make it fail?
>
> Because the mingw64-*86*-pcre/2 packages provide only dynamic libraries and
> their linkage archives:
     <.. snip list of libpcre*.dll and .dll.a files ..>
> where others provide both dynamic and static libraries e.g.
> mingw64-i686-zstd:
>
> usr/i686-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/bin/libzstd-1.dll
> usr/i686-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/lib/libzstd.a
> usr/i686-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/lib/libzstd.dll.a
>
> possibly where the size of useful library members are reasonably small
> enough,
> and unlikely to need significantly updated, to be statically linked into an
> standalone executable or embedded system component, that itself may be
> regularly
> updated, rather than requiring large chunks of a framework to be linked that
> may need regular updates.

Thanks for the explanation :)

I went looking to see how the mingw pcre package was built and ended up here:
  https://cygwin.com/git-cygwin-packages/?p=git/cygwin-packages/mingw64-i686-pcre.git;a=summary

If that's correct and the latest then it looks to be a bit out of
date; the current release is 8.44
  https://ftp.pcre.org/pub/pcre/

Looking at the latest cygport info
  https://cygwin.com/git-cygwin-packages/?p=git/cygwin-packages/mingw64-i686-pcre.git;a=blob;f=mingw64-i686-pcre.cygport;h=7456c41e6c45aad8403303aee413144fcf5d1b58;hb=3200774765aabbdda5cf4e5e9934c3d25e6e7196

and going off the current pcre doc included with the 8.44 tarball:
 The Autotools PCRE building process uses libtool to build both shared
and static libraries by default. You can suppress one of these by
adding one of

  --disable-shared
  --disable-static

to the configure command, as required.

The cygport info doesn't have "--disable-static" so maybe not having
static libraries wasn't an intentional omission??

Thanks
Lee