Static linking of Guile extensions

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi,

Today I tried investigating if was possible to build Guile so that even
its extension modules could be built in statically rather than
dynamically loaded. I didn't succeed; even when building Guile the way
its described by the %guile-static package in Guix (see (gnu packages
make-bootstrap)), I would still get the following message when attemting
activation of readline:

scheme@(guile-user)> (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
While compiling expression:
ERROR: In procedure dynamic-link: file: "libguilereadline-v-18", message: "file 
not found"

Interestingly a static library for readline seems to have been built:

/gnu/store/xxi8scxxx8g6i9h0lm57i5kc3xwcgj5r-guile-static-2.0.14/lib/libguilereadline-v-18.a

One use case would be to have readline support for a statically linked
Guile such as used for the GuixSD init ram disk; I'm currently attemting
to troubleshoot a problem at the init prompt (Guile) and it would be
great to have line editing support there!

Maxim