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Static Library ○꠹｜Definition｜1st｜20261014115240-00-⌔
Static library
A static library or statically linked library contains functions and data that can be included in a consuming computer program at build-time such that the library does not need to be accessible in a separate file at run-time.1 If all libraries are statically linked, then the resulting executable will be stand-alone, a.k.a. a static build.
Static libraries are collections of object files, usually augmented with a symbol table that accelerates the search for the needed file(s). On most systems (Unix-like systems and Microsoft Windows) this comes in the form of ar archive files, though on some systems such as z/OS and OpenVMS a different format is used.2 A static library is either merged with other static libraries and object files at build-time to form a single executable or loaded at run-time into the address space of their corresponding executable at a static memory offset determined at compile-time/link-time.
Printed 2026-10-14.
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Link to original Footnotes
“Static Libraries”. TLDP. Retrieved 3 October 2013. ↩
A static library on z/OS may be a partitioned data set (PDS) containg object deck s, a PDS containing load modules or a Partitioned Data Set Extended (PDSE or PDS/E) containing program object s. (DFSMS introduced PDS/E; the other two formats are inherited from OS/360.) z/OS programs built for the UNIX System Services (USS) environment use ar. ↩
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