Can you statically compile a cygwin application?

Question

Does cygwin allow a statically compiled binary? This would prevent the need for cygwin1.dll being on the PATH of target machines.

Answer 1

Nope, it's currently not possible to statically link against cygwin1.dll; if your application does not use unix emulation (i.e. pure win32) you can pass -mno-cygwin to the compiler.

See also the FAQ:
http://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.programming.win32-no-cygwin
http://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.programming.static-linking