Is there a way to automatically make a library either static or dynamic?

Question

I know this might be a long shot, but here it goes. I have several active projects and each has sub project library which gets compiled when the main project compiles. These libraries are dynamic ones, but recently there was an issue that might arise a need for those libraries (most of them are shared between projects) to be static instead of dynamic.

Now, I am quite sure someone has devised a system where I could make a library which could be compiled wither as static into the project or dynamic one with something like a simple preprocessor directive or something. If not, I'll pipe dream away.

edit:

looks like CMake might be it, however, apart from building stuff I would also like to alleviate __declspec(dllimport) and __declspec(dllexport) from my code - so that I can automatically switch between static and dynamic. Although it is fairly easy to do with preprocessor macros, I thought maybe there might be some form of a system already in use by people?

Answer 1

If you want it to be cross platform, you'll have to use a tool like SCons or Make and setup different compiler/linker arguments based on whatever command variables you pass in. You'll have to do it for each platform and link-type combo you support.

In Visual Studio's Configuration Manager (you're not limited to just Release and Debug) and then you can have ReleaseStatic and ReleaseDynamic and any other configs you can dream up. Then you just set the proper compiler and linker switches for each configuration.

Answer 2

Download the cURL source code and have a look at its setup. It can build libcurl for DLL or static in Windows, and static or shared object in Unix.

Answer 3

I like to use CMake to avoid these type of problems.