I think it's largely that many distros ship pkg-config files which are just broken for the static linking case -- so configure tests "does pkg- config say this will work for static linking", and pkg-config says "yes, that will work", and then it doesn't. If you care about trying to get this to be more reliable you'd want to investigate all of these and file bugs upstream with your distro and get them fixed...
-- You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1878348 Title: --static build fails in v5.0 (since 5010cec2bc87dafab39b3913c8ca91f88df9c540) Status in QEMU: New Bug description: Hi, Since commit 5010cec2bc87dafab39b3913c8ca91f88df9c540, building qemu fails when configured with --static (eg ../configure --target- list=x86_64-softmmu,x86_64-linux-user --enable-debug --static). On ubuntu 16.04, it fails to find -lffi and -lselinux. After I apt-get install libffi-dev libselinux1-dev, the build still fails: ../backends/dbus-vmstate.o: In function `_nocheck__trace_dbus_vmstate_pre_save': /home/christophe.lyon/src/qemu/build-static/backends/trace.h:29: undefined reference to `_TRACE_DBUS_VMSTATE_PRE_SAVE_DSTATE' ../backends/dbus-vmstate.o: In function `_nocheck__trace_dbus_vmstate_post_load': /home/christophe.lyon/src/qemu/build-static/backends/trace.h:52: undefined reference to `_TRACE_DBUS_VMSTATE_POST_LOAD_DSTATE' ../backends/dbus-vmstate.o: In function `_nocheck__trace_dbus_vmstate_loading': /home/christophe.lyon/src/qemu/build-static/backends/trace.h:75: undefined reference to `_TRACE_DBUS_VMSTATE_LOADING_DSTATE' ../backends/dbus-vmstate.o: In function `_nocheck__trace_dbus_vmstate_saving': /home/christophe.lyon/src/qemu/build-static/backends/trace.h:98: undefined reference to `_TRACE_DBUS_VMSTATE_SAVING_DSTATE' collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1878348/+subscriptions
