Create a binary with statically linked dependencies

[hovsater]

Hey! 👋 I'm looking into updating the ctags binary in https://github.com/textmate/ctags.tmbundle to the latest version. The TextMate bundle seem to have a statically linked binary of ctags.

kevinsjoberg@Kevins-MacBook-Pro ~/c/ctags.tmbundle (master)> otool -L Support/bin/ctags-objc 
Support/bin/ctags-objc:
	/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 159.1.0)

I'm fairly inexperienced when it comes to C and its tooling, so I'm not 100% sure how I would go about building a statically linked binary. It only needs to run on macOS since TextMate is a macOS application.

I found a flag, --enable-static, which I assume I could use in some way to achieve what I'm after. Any pointers would be much appreciated!

[leleliu008]

you can not use --enable-static flags on macOS, because macOS not provide /usr/lib/libSystem.B.a

[hovsater]

@leleliu008 thanks for explaining. Looking at the output from otool it looks like /usr/lib/libSystem.B.a is still dynamically linked, while the other dependencies are not. Is there a way to achieve that on macOS?

Given it's going to be run on macOS only, it's okay that /usr/lib/libSystem.B.a is dynamically linked while the other dependencies are not.

[leleliu008]

There are many solutions. I have been working on cmake build system. this issue can be easily resolved if using cmake build system. But you need wait one day, I will finish this work tomorrow.

[hovsater]

Thanks. Appreciate the help! 🙂

[leleliu008]

step1: install dependency libraries and tools

brew install jansson libxml2 libyaml docutils

step2: clone universal-ctags

git clone https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags

step4: change to ctags dir

cd ctags

step5: clone cmakew

git clone https://github.com/leleliu008/cmakew

step6: copy cmakew/* to ctags dir

cp -r cmakew/* .

step7: apply patches

patch -p1  < patch/*.patch

step8: config

./cmakew config -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=./output

step9: build and install

./cmakew install

[hovsater]

@leleliu008 thank you! 🙏 Seems to be working just fine!

[leleliu008]

--enable-static can be used on any other platform except macOS . using this flags is not a good idea, because this flags cause libc.a linked into ctags binary. It may cause problems when you distribute to other os.

[hovsater]

I'm not going to distribute this on any other platforms. I need a binary that can be run on any macOS machine without relying on the dependencies to be available at a certain path. I want the binary to work without having to tell the consumer to install jansson etc to make it work.

[psprint]

Anyway, a binary via GitHub releases would be cool, allowing installation via zinit zsh plugin manager, like dstask, fd, bat, fzf and others.

[leleliu008]

@masatake https://github.com/leleliu008/uctags-nightly-build is ready, if you have any advise please let me known.

[masatake]

@leleliu008 I think you can create a repository under https://github.com/universal-ctags. You can run the repository like https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags-win32.
Then you can update https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags/blob/master/README.md .

[leleliu008]

@masatake https://github.com/leleliu008/uctags-nightly-build can be transformed to https://github.com/universal-ctags

Reference: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/creating-and-managing-repositories/transferring-a-repository

[leleliu008]

@masatake I transformed https://github.com/leleliu008/uctags-nightly-build to https://github.com/universal-ctags/uctags-nightly-build yesterday, but it has limitation, so I create a new repository https://github.com/universal-ctags/ctags-nightly-build today, so https://github.com/universal-ctags/uctags-nightly-build can be deleted, I have insufficient permission to delete repository it, I think you can delete it.

[masatake]

Done. Thank you.