Does not support static linking

[ddevault]

I can work around this like so (building Params::Validate in this example):

perl ./Build.PL --installdirs=vendor --config ldflags="-static" --config dlext="a"
./Build 2>/dev/null || true
ar cvr blib/arch/auto/Params/Validate/XS/XS.a lib/Params/Validate/XS.o
./Build

I dug into this a little bit and arrived at link_c (lib/Module/Build/Base.pm:5331) as the main place where changes would have to be made. I've never used Perl so some patience may be required as I examine this further.

[karenetheridge]

I expect you can achieve the desired results with ExtUtils::MakeMaker...

[ddevault]

Not when I'm packaging software that uses Module::Build, I'm afraid.

[dolmen]

For the special case of Params::Validate you may ask its author to switch the install tool to ExtUtils::MakeMaker.
Or you can try to implement that yourself by forking the repo and changing the dist.ini to make it generate a Makefile.PL instead of a Build.PL. You will probably need some help from the dzil channel on irc.perl.org.

[Leont]

Module::Build, or actually ExtUtils::CBuilder not being able to do this is an annoying issue. Part of the problem is that currently about 0 people truly understand the entire process.

The high level story actually contains two different steps

1. Building static lib (make/make install)
2. Linking a new perl including the new static lib and all previous static libs (make perl)

What you just described is the first step, something needs to do the second step too, but that can be another dist using ExtUtils::MakeMaker. The second step is the one with the complications.

[mohawk2]

I still just about remember how EUMM does the perl-making. That bit of code (and actually also all of EUMM's XS-building stuff) seems ripe for putting into a separate module, possibly ExtUtils::CBuilder.

[karenetheridge]

I made an attempt to convert Params-Validate to EUMM last year, in houseabsolute/Params-Validate#12 -- but there were a few unresolved issues that some toolchain-gangers were going to look into..