Re: How to build statically on Windows

Hi Dan,

Yeah, unfortunately --static-libpq doesn't do what it should anymore. We
should remove that option.

When building pyscopg2 from source, the binary Windows Postgres packages
does not include the statically linked library (In fairness, I haven't
checked the latest packages, but that is how it has been in the past). The
library included with the binary packages was the DLL import library and it
was named libpq.lib. This is an issue, because originally when you built
from source on windows, the file libpq.lib was the static link library,
whereas the DLL import library was named libpqdll.lib. So we have a name
inconsistency and no way to link statically with the Postgres binary
distribution.

This got even more convoluted a few major versions back with the source of
Postgres, as the Windows perl build scripts quit creating the build file
for the static link library, only building the DLL import library AND
naming it libpq.lib. With our Appveyor build script, I cheated and
modified the perl script to build the library instead of the DLL at this
line:
file_replace('Mkvcbuild.pm', "'libpq', 'dll'", "'libpq', 'lib'")

With that said, I am not happy with that solution and always intended to
revisit the setup script portion for windows, but always had more questions
than answers, some of them:
* If static libraries are not part of the Postgres binary distribution (or
even the build from source option by default), do we concern ourselves with
them? Personally I prefer static libraries because I think it has less
support issues, but???
* If people are building psycopg from source, what libraries do we assume
they have installed? pg_config probably would not be working, so
include/library paths would have to be passed. What about other
dependencies (ie openssl, still use the has_ssl flag?)? There are slightly
different link libraries between some Postgres, so versions matter, too.
* Do we try to differentiate between the DLL import library and the static
library since the name can be the same between them (size?)?
* Or do we say heck with it and just link against a file named libpq.lib,
letting the builder point to the libpq they want to use?

Maybe an option is to have setup.py on windows call the appveyor script
(with some modifications) and build everything from scratch? It takes
about 40 minutes to build everything, tho, and does require some storage
space for the source and build files, so not the best solution.

-jason

On Mon, Oct 4, 2021 at 5:13 PM Daniele Varrazzo <daniele(dot)varrazzo(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:

> Hi Dan,
>
> On Tue, 5 Oct 2021 at 01:01, Dan Davis <dansmood(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> >
> > Can anyone give me a solution to build psycopg2 statically on Windows?
> >
> > I have succeeded in building it, but when I run dumpbin /dependents on
> the generated file (the PYD file), it still depends on libpq.dll even when
> I pass --static-libpq.
>
> I haven't personally used --static-libpq in a long time, and neither
> have I used windows for a while. As far as I know that part of the set
> up might have bitrotten.
>
> If anyone can help Dan it would be appreciated.
>
> Dan, there is a ticket/MR in the tracker of which I've never been able
> to make completely sense: https://github.com/psycopg/psycopg2/pull/758
> Would you like to check if that's the issue that doesn't allow
> building the lib statically and if so can you propose a MR or just
> acknowledge that the proposed one works as expected?
>
> Thank you everyone
>
> -- Daniele
>
>
>