Static libraries
As we have explained before, a static library is one of the possible products of a C project. In this section, we are going to talk about static libraries and the way they are created and used. We will then continue this discussion by introducing dynamic libraries in the next section.
A static library is simply a Unix archive made from the relocatable object files. Such a library is usually linked together with other object files to form an executable object file.
Note that a static library itself is not considered as an object file, rather it is a container for them. In other words, static libraries are not ELF files in Linux systems, nor are they Mach-O files in macOS systems. They are simply archived files that have been created by the Unix ar utility.
When a linker is about to use a static library in the linking step, it first tries to extract the relocatable object files from it, then it starts to look up and resolve the undefined symbols that may...
