How to link against static msvc libc on Windows?

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Hello @xavier83. Welcome to @ziggit :slight_smile:

I am on linux and tried to generate a windows executable using the latest zig from master branch (0.12.0-dev).
I found two ways:

  1. zig build -Dtarget=x86_64-windows-gnu
    This method uses the zig bundled libc (mingw) but I cannot find a way to make it link statically. It requires dynamic libraries (api-ms-win-crt-*-l1-1-0.dll) that I don’t know where to find them. (On the first run It takes some time to build because it compiles the libc from sources). This must be a bug, because the resulting binary believes that is static (@import("builtin").link_mode == std.builtin.LinkMode.static)
  2. zig build -Dtarget=x86_64-windows-msvc
    This method does not use a zig bundled libc and expects windows headers and libraries to be installed.
    I successfully created a static binary after installing crt and sdk using xwin. The linker used libmt.dll (/mt).
const std = @import("std");

pub fn build(b: *std.Build) void {
    const exe = b.addExecutable(.{
        .name = "foo",
        .root_source_file = b.path("src/main.zig"),
        .target = b.standardTargetOptions(.{}),
        .optimize = b.standardOptimizeOption(.{}),
        .linkage = .static,
        .link_libc = true,
    });
//    required only for msvc when cross compiling, after installing crt & sdk using xwin
//    exe.addIncludePath(.{ .cwd_relative = "xwin/sdk/include/ucrt" });
//    exe.addIncludePath(.{ .cwd_relative = "xwin/crt/include" });
//    exe.addLibraryPath(.{ .cwd_relative = "xwin/crt/lib/x86_64" });
//    exe.addLibraryPath(.{ .cwd_relative = "xwin/sdk/lib/ucrt/x86_64" });
//    exe.addLibraryPath(.{ .cwd_relative = "xwin/sdk/lib/um/x86_64" });
    b.installArtifact(exe);
}

Note the .linkage and the .link_libc options.

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