new dependency on libelf is not captured in package

[drzaeus77]

We added the dependency on libelf-dev into the debian/control file, but the downstream clients are now getting a linker error if libelf is not installed. Obviously this needs to be fixed.

The easy fix is to add a dependency in the deb on libelf1, but I would much rather have statically linked libelf.a. However, that package doesn't compile with -fPIC.

The same question probably goes for rpm, but I haven't tested that yet.

@vmg can you look into this, and see if somehow we can do it statically?

[vmg]

Hey! Sorry I didn't get to this issue early.

As @drzaeus77 accurately points out, the libelf.a that ships with Debian and Ubuntu is not compiled with -fPIC, so it's not possible to link it statically into a library. Boo! :/

I think the only possible workaround is vendoring libelf as part of bcc. It's not a big dependency, and IMO it's better than having to install libelf.so on production systems.

Let me try vendor the library and see how this turns out.

[vmg]

Hmpf. So the elfutils package in Debian does build a PIC version of libelf.a (aptly named libelf_pic.a), it just chooses not to package it. Disappointing.

@drzaeus77: What would be your preferred course of action? Vendor the libelf sources into vendor/libelf? Or add the elfutils git repository as a submodule?