How to use pkg-config to link a library statically

Question

I\'d like to link libpng found by pkg-config statically.

pkg-config --libs --static libpng

outputs

-L/usr/local/Cell

Answer 1

The pkg-config --static option relies on proper tagging in the .pc files. If providing the --static option does not return correct information necessary to link against the libpng archive, then you cannot use pkg-config for that purpose.

I suspect libpng (along with a majority of other packages) dropped support for static linking some time after libpng 1.2. They may still provide a library archive, but the libpng pkg-config file is no longer properly tagged to support a static link. You will have to manually tell ld to use the static lib.