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Message-ID: <71e853b9-1b6c-4796-9488-b58f69c7de1e@dronecode.org.uk>
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2023 16:28:36 +0100
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Subject: Re: Question on statically linking with cygwin
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To: Johannes Thoma <johannes@johannesthoma.com>,
        Martin Wege <martin.l.wege@gmail.com>,
        The Cygwin Mailing List <cygwin@cygwin.com>
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 <f209cefe-0ca0-dd6f-dab8-9cf82fa57f8c@johannesthoma.com>
In-Reply-To: <f209cefe-0ca0-dd6f-dab8-9cf82fa57f8c@johannesthoma.com>
From: Jon Turney via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com>
Reply-To: Jon Turney <jon.turney@dronecode.org.uk>
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On 22/09/2023 12:12, Johannes Thoma via Cygwin wrote:
> 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 ...

That FAQ probably needs clarifying.

The two sentences are probably intended to be taken separately.

So, to be clear, there are technical reasons why the cygwin DLL is not 
also made available as a static library.

>>> 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.

If you do work out how to do this, patches would be welcome...


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