– I tried looking at static linking in Mac OS X and it seems nearly impossible. Take a look at this http://stackoverflow.com/a/3801032

– I have no idea what that -static flag does, but I'm pretty sure that's not how you link to a library. Let me RTFM a bit.

Minutes later...

– I'm gonna have to write this stuff down.

First things first, gcc isn't the default compiler in Mac OS X anymore. Since Xcode 5, the Apple developer toolchain uses clang, and gcc only aliases to clang.

NOTE: All shell outputs in this document were produced with the default bash on Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.3 with Xcode 7.2 installed.

$ gcc -v
Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 7.0.2 (clang-700.1.81)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin15.3.0
Thread model: posix

So let's look into clang.

$ man clang

clang is a C, C++, and Objective-C compiler which encompasses preprocessing, parsing, optimization, code generation, assembly, and linking. Depending on which high-level mode setting is passed, Clang will stop before doing a full link. While Clang is highly integrated, it is important to understand the stages of compilation, to understand how to invoke it. These stages are:

Driver
    The clang executable is actually a small driver which controls the overall execution of other tools such as the compiler, assembler and linker. Typically you do not need to interact with the driver, but you transparently use it to run the other tools.

Preprocessing
    This stage handles tokenization of the input source file, macro expansion, #include expansion and handling of other preprocessor directives. The output of this stage is typically called a ".i" (for C), ".ii" (for C++), ".mi" (for Objective-C) , or ".mii" (for Objective-C++) file.

Parsing and Semantic Analysis
    This stage parses the input file, translating preprocessor tokens into a parse tree. Once in the form of a parser tree, it applies semantic analysis to compute types for expressions as well and determine whether the code is well formed. This stage is responsible for generating most of the compiler warnings as well as parse errors. The output of this stage is an "Abstract Syntax Tree" (AST).

Code Generation and Optimization
    This stage translates an AST into low-level intermediate code (known as "LLVM IR") and ultimately to machine code. This phase is responsible for optimizing the generated code and handling target-specific code generation. The output of this stage is typically called a ".s" file or "assembly" file.

    Clang also supports the use of an integrated assembler, in which the code generator produces object files directly. This avoids the overhead of generating the ".s" file and of calling the target assembler.

Assembler
    This stage runs the target assembler to translate the output of the compiler into a target object file. The output of this stage is typically called a ".o" file or "object" file.

Linker
    This stage runs the target linker to merge multiple object files into an executable or dynamic library. The output of this stage is typically called an "a.out", ".dylib" or ".so" file.

So static linking is an option of the linker stage of compilation. So let's try ld's manual.

$ man ld

OPTIONS
   Options that control the kind of output
     -execute    The default. Produce a mach-o main executable that has file type MH_EXECUTE.
     
     -dylib      Produce a mach-o shared library that has file type MH_DYLIB.
     
     -bundle     Produce a mach-o bundle that has file type MH_BUNDLE.
     
     -dynamic    The default. Implied by -dylib, -bundle, or -execute
     
     -static     Produces a mach-o file that does not use the dyld. Only used building the kernel.
     

Now we have it. -static does not control how the output links to libraries; it controls the type of output produced by the linker. In this case, -static is used to indicate that no dynamic linking should occur with this binary. Ever. The only file to ever need this option is the kernel.

So how does

$ man ld

Options that control libraries
  -lx         This option tells the linker to search for libx.dylib or libx.a in the library search path. If string x is of the form y.o, then that file is searched for in the same places, but without prepending `lib' or appending `.a' or `.dylib' to the filename.
 
  -Ldir       Add dir to the list of directories in which to search for libraries. Directories specified with -L are searched in the order they appear on the command line and before the default search path. In Xcode4 and later, there can be a space between the -L and directory.