c++ - What does compilation flag -static really means for gcc

Question

For example I did this:

${CROSS_COMPILE}gcc -static myinit.c -o myinit

Also I did this without static:

${CROSS_COMPILE}gcc  myinit.c -o myinit

There is no effect in my case, in both cases binary gives same result.

So what is the role of static here?

Here is the program I am compiling:

#include <stdio.h>

int
main ()
{
    printf ("
");
    printf ("Hello world from %s!
", __FILE__);
    while (1) { }
    return 0;
}

Also

${CROSS_COMPILE} is arm-xilinx-linux-gnueabi-

Answer 1

From the gcc man page, it's used to enforce static linking of libraries. Some systems will always link statically if dynamic linking is not supported.

-static On systems that support dynamic linking, this prevents linking with the shared libraries. On other systems, this option has no effect.

       This option will not work on Mac OS X unless all libraries (including libgcc.a)
       have also been compiled with -static.  Since neither a static version of
       libSystem.dylib nor crt0.o are provided, this option is not useful to most
       people.