I'm trying to create a shared library that my application will be loading at run time to determine its branding specific information. I am linking my application statically so that it is able to be run on different Linux platforms that do not have the same libraries as the one I build on. However, the shared library also needs this capability, but I can not figure out how to remove it's dependencies. Any ideas on how this would work?

Somehow, the shared library needs to use the statically linked application for its unresolved dependencies. I am using the -rdynamic flag when I link the application and I have tried using the -static flag when linking the shared library.

If it helps, my application is being linked with these flags:
g++ -static -rdynamic ...

The shared library is being linked like this, so far:
g++ -fPIC -shared -Wl,-static -lpthread -ldl -Wl,-call_shared ...

Some options I have tried using, but not successfully or perhaps not correctly are:
-nodefaultlibs -nostartfiles -nostdlibs -Wl,-nostdlib

Thanks!

Could you be more spesific with the problem in question (with test-cases would be cool).
Also have you read the Program Library HOWTO. Most issues seems to be handled there.

Actually, I've been doing research and I've found that specifying the -Wl,-static flag before linking any libraries should be the correct thing to do.
However, it appears there is a bug in versions of GCC above 3.1.1 (from what I've read, still exploring that) which causes libstdc++.a to have an undefined versioned symbol name std::time_put_w@@CLIBCPP_3.2 when linked in this manner. That means that it is not possible to create a shared library with supporting libraries statically linked in. Here's an example:

// Hello.cpp
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

class Hello {
public:
Hello( const char* msg ) { cout << msg << endl; )
};

int main(void) {
Hello world("Hello World!");
}

g++ -fPIC -shared -static-libgcc -o hello.so hello.cpp -Wl,-static
/usr/bin/ld: print.so: undefined versioned symbol name std::time_put_w@@GLIBCPP3.2

Note: there are other ways to get this example to work without the -Wl,-static flag, but this is just a simple illustration of the problem.

Hmm.. I have not done any indepth research to be certain that that is the right way to do it, but the commands seems to work with gcc-2.95 and gcc-3.0, but not any newer official version. IIRC, there has been some major restructuring in the object format in the gcc3.2.

The problem seems to be fixed in the newest(two days old) gcc (version 3.4 20031116 (experimental)) brought from the gcc-snapshot debian package.