Re: Question on statically linking with cygwin

[Johannes Thoma <johannes@johannesthoma.com>]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your answer, comments inline:

Am 22.09.23 um 07:54 schrieb Martin Wege via Cygwin:
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 5:24 PM Johannes Thoma via Cygwin
> <cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> As I understood the reason for not being able to statically link
>> the cygwin1.dll in to a binary and distribute that is because of
>> licensing issues.
> 
> Do you have any references for that?
I read that in the Cygwin FAQ:

https://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.programming.static-linking

I read through the licensing options and IMHO linking statically
against cygwin (which is GPL) from a program (like WinDRBD) that
is also GPL should be allowed. But I am not a lawyer ...

> 
>> Are there any technical issues that would make
>> it impossible to link with cygwin statically?
>>
>> The reason I am asking is I am working on a GPL project
>> (WinDRBD: https://github.com/LINBIT/windrbd) and am currently
>> delivering the cygwin1.dll along with the binary. It would be
>> desireable to have the cygwin1.dll statically linked (for example
>> to avoid version clashes) instead. Is that technically possible?
>> If necessary I am ready to compile cygwin (at least the needed
>> files) on my own.
> 
> Interesting.
> But how (from a developers perspective) do you link cygwin1.dll
> statically into a binary?
> 
I would build my own cygwin1.lib or cygwin1.a and statically link
against it.

> Thanks,
> Martin
> 
Best regards,

- Johannes