# soundtracker

Published articles for soundtracker.

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## Static linking support

DevFeed: [Static linking support](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/static-linking-support-22392.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.red-lang.org/2026/06/static-linking-support.html>)

Author: Nenad Rakocevic (noreply@blogger.com)

Published: 2026-06-29T18:39:33Z

Content type: release

Language: en

Sources: [Red](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/red.md>)

Topics: [Red](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/red.md>), [toolchain](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/toolchain.md>), [C](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/c.md>), [parquet](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/parquet.md>), [MSVC](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/msvc.md>), [Claude Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/claude-code.md>), [codex](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/codex.md>)

Tags: [agents](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agents.md>), [c](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/c.md>), [claude-code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/claude-code.md>), [codex](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/codex.md>), [compression](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/compression.md>), [mod-player](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mod-player.md>), [msvc](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/msvc.md>), [soundtracker](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/soundtracker.md>), [static-linking](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/static-linking.md>), [toolchain](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/toolchain.md>)

### AI overview

The Red toolchain now supports statically linking C libraries, allowing Red/System programs to be distributed as single self-contained executables. The article explains the linker's handling of object formats, symbols, sections, and relocations, and demonstrates the process with the miniz compression library.

### Source excerpt

We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds. -Aristotle Onassis The coding agents revolution is taking the world by storm and we are right in the middle of it. Like most of you, we have experimented with the agent's amazing (and frustrating) capabilities, pondering the role of Red and our vision in that new world. The conclusion is (un)surprisingly clear, Red is still very relevant and will be even more so as we improve it to better work with agents. In the meantime, here are some treats, starting with expanding our toolchain to support static linking of libraries written in C, allowing you to distribute single executables with all dependencies packed inside. This work has been done with the heavy assistance of frontier models and local harnesses (Claude Code and Codex). You might expect that to be a small addition, but a static linker has to read each platform's object format, pull in just the pieces it needs, fold duplicated sections, resolve system symbols and patch relocations by hand, so there was quite a bit of machinery to put together. The reward is the result everyone wants: a single, self-contained binary, with nothing to install beside it. A simple example Let's compress some data without shipping a compression library next to our program. For something concrete we will use miniz, a small, MIT-licensed library that implements the well-known zlib and deflate APIs. It is distributed as a single `miniz.c` / `miniz.h` pair, which makes it especially convenient to compile and link. The first step is to compile miniz into a static library. There are only two things to keep in mind. Red/System currently produces 32-bit code, so the object has to be 32-bit too; and it helps to switch off a couple of compiler extras (C++ exception tables and stack canaries) that would otherwise make the object reference runtime helpers we do not need. On Windows, with MSVC: cl /c /MT /GS- /EHs-c- /GR- miniz.c lib /out:miniz.l