My application links against libsamplerate.a. I am doing this to make distributing the final binary easier.
I am worried that perhaps the code inside the .a file depends on some other libraries I also will need to distribute.
But if it doesn't I am worried I am bloating up my application too much by including multiple copies of eg. libc.
What exactly will be inside libsamplerate.a? Just libsamperate's bytecode? Or more?
Just the object code for libsamplerate. Statically linking against a single library doesn't make all libraries linked statically; that would be Bad.
A .a file is basically just a bundle of .o files. You can demonstrate this using the ar tool.
For instance, to display the contents of your library:
ar -t libsamplerate.a
To create a .a file from scratch:
ar -r tim.a *.txt
A static library is just a collection of object files. When you compile a program against a static library, the object code for the functions used by your program is copied from the library into your executable. Linking against a static library will not cause any functions outside that library to be included in your code.