Building a statically linked executable with Swift on Ubuntu

Question

I'm trying to build an statically linked executable from a swift source on Ubuntu.

Calling

swift build -Xswiftc -static-stdlib

as suggested in Compile Swift script with static Swift core library

returns this error:

/usr/bin/ld.gold: error: cannot find -lFoundation

Some educated guesses: Researching this hasn't led me very far, I know it means the library can't be found. Maybe it isn't in the compiler's path ?

Full error message:

user@user-VirtualBox:/path/to/project$ swift build -Xswiftc -static-stdlib
Compile Swift Module 'projectName' (4 sources)
Linking ./.build/debug/projectName
/usr/bin/ld.gold: error: cannot find -lFoundation
/usr/bin/ld.gold: error: cannot find -lFoundation
/usr/bin/ld.gold: error: cannot find -lFoundation
/usr/bin/ld.gold: error: cannot find -lFoundation
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_1.swift:67: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation17JSONSerialization'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_1.swift:67: error: undefined reference to '_TFVC10Foundation17JSONSerialization14WritingOptionsau13prettyPrintedS1_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_1.swift:68: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation8NSString'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_1.swift:68: error: undefined reference to '_TFVE10FoundationSS8Encodingau4utf8S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_1.swift:68: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation8NSStringCfT4dataVS_4Data8encodingSu_GSqS0__'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_1.swift:69: error: undefined reference to '_TWPC10Foundation8NSObjects9EquatableS_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_1.swift:72: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation8NSStringCfT13stringLiteralVs12StaticString_S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_1.swift:76: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation8NSString'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_1.swift:76: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation8NSStringCfT13stringLiteralVs12StaticString_S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_2.swift:73: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation17JSONSerialization'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_2.swift:73: error: undefined reference to '_TFVC10Foundation17JSONSerialization14WritingOptionsau13prettyPrintedS1_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_2.swift:74: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation8NSString'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_2.swift:74: error: undefined reference to '_TFVE10FoundationSS8Encodingau4utf8S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_2.swift:74: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation8NSStringCfT4dataVS_4Data8encodingSu_GSqS0__'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_2.swift:75: error: undefined reference to '_TWPC10Foundation8NSObjects9EquatableS_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_2.swift:78: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation8NSStringCfT13stringLiteralVs12StaticString_S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_2.swift:82: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation8NSString'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_2.swift:82: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation8NSStringCfT13stringLiteralVs12StaticString_S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_3.swift:106: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation17JSONSerialization'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_3.swift:106: error: undefined reference to '_TFVC10Foundation17JSONSerialization14WritingOptionsau13prettyPrintedS1_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_3.swift:107: error: undefined reference to '_TFVE10FoundationSS8Encodingau4utf8S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_3.swift:107: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation8NSStringCfT4dataVS_4Data8encodingSu_GSqS0__'
/path/to/project/Sources/SomeClass_3.swift:108: error: undefined reference to '_TWPC10Foundation8NSObjects9EquatableS_'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:24: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation12NSDictionary'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:24: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation12NSDictionaryCft17dictionaryLiteralGSaTP_P____S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:51: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation12NSDictionary'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:51: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation12NSDictionaryCft17dictionaryLiteralGSaTP_P____S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:99: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation12NSDictionary'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:99: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation12NSDictionaryCft17dictionaryLiteralGSaTP_P____S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:112: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation12NSDictionary'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:112: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation12NSDictionaryCft17dictionaryLiteralGSaTP_P____S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:167: error: undefined reference to '_TMaC10Foundation17JSONSerialization'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:167: error: undefined reference to '_TFVC10Foundation17JSONSerialization14WritingOptionsau13prettyPrintedS1_'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:168: error: undefined reference to '_TFVE10FoundationSS8Encodingau4utf8S0_'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:168: error: undefined reference to '_TFC10Foundation8NSStringCfT4dataVS_4Data8encodingSu_GSqS0__'
/path/to/project/Sources/main.swift:169: error: undefined reference to '_TWPC10Foundation8NSObjects9EquatableS_'
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
<unknown>:0: error: link command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
<unknown>:0: error: build had 1 command failures
error: exit(1): /path/to/swift-3.0.2-RELEASE-ubuntu16.04/usr/bin/swift-build-tool -f /path/to/project/.build/debug.yaml

Answer 1

The problem is that Foundation is not available as static library. There is an open bug for this:

https://bugs.swift.org/browse/SR-2205

You might be able to work around this problem if you could build a static Foundation lib, e.g. as part of building Swift from source.