Cannot link statically against alsa library

[juliohq]

I'm getting the following error when trying to link against alsa (statik set to true):

error: could not find native static library `asound`, perhaps an -L flag is missing?

I'm using a patched pkg-config-rs that removes is_static_available (#102) and in theory, just allows you to statically link any system library.

I'm using Arch Linux, so there are no static libraries (*.a files) under /usr/lib (as stated in this forum comment: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=751287#p751287). Maybe that's the reason why I cannot statically link on Arch?

[sdroege]

Well, if you don't have static libraries then you also can't statically link to those non-existing libraries. This seems all working as expected. What behaviour would you expect?

[juliohq]

Well, if you don't have static libraries then you also can't statically link to those non-existing libraries. This seems all working as expected. What behaviour would you expect?

I would just like to record this issue (as the repository doesn't have a wiki currently) for Arch Linux users trying to compile libraries statically using pkg-config-rs.

I think the main problem is that doing the same thing in C/C++ (gcc and ld) works as expected, even though technically I don't have the required static libraries, but instead only the headers and source code files.

I'd like to know if someone has figured it out before and record it here too.