Re: [open-cobol-list] Undocumented cobc option: -static

[Brian Tiffin]

Scott McKellar wrote:
> There appears to be an undocumented option to cobc: -static.

Yeah, sorry I didn't speak up earlier.

It was hidden in the FAQ under CALL, unindexed sub-subdivision and not 
in the table of contents really.

http://opencobol.add1tocobol.com/gnucobol/#call

In a few seconds, that entry will include a blurb on CALL STDCALL as well.

It is powerful voodoo that definitely needs more explaining.

Off topic, CALL STATIC is the only way to get at some libraries. GNU 
Prolog for instance.

Makes calling things like "puts", a no-brainer on Cygwin. Un-powerful 
cryptic voodoo otherwise.  ;-)

Cheers,
Brian
> So far as I can tell, this option tells cobc to translate CALL statements to 
> static calls instead of dynamic calls.
>
> However I only discovered that by trial and error.  A program that wasn't 
> working without -static is now working with it.  I also examined the generated 
> C code to verify that it's different.  I don't know what other effects -static 
> may have.
>
> However, -static is not listed among the compile options in the FAQ, nor in the 
> corresponding page in Gary Cutler's book (I'm looking at the FAQ for GnuCOBOL 
> v1.1 and the Cutler book for v2.0).  My only clue that -static was even 
> available was that I saw it used in a couple of examples on the FAQ page.  I 
> took a wild guess at what it did, and it looks like I guessed right.
>
> I'm glad I found out about -static because the default of dynamic linking could 
> have been a deal-breaker.  Without -static I couldn't find a way to link to a 
> static library (a *.a file on a UNIX or Linux system).  Migrating to GnuCOBOL 
> would be even more disruptive if we had to use dynamic linking everywhere.  It 
> might not even be possible; for all I know we may rely on a third party static 
> library somewhere that isn't available as a shared library.
>
> Questions:
>
> Have I interpreted -static correctly?
>
> Does -static have any other effects that I didn't notice?
>
> Will -static be available in v2.0?  (I'm currently doing my explorations using 
> v1.1.)
>
> Could someone please please document -static in the FAQ and wherever else is 
> appropriate?
>
> Scott McKellar
>
>
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