CMake dynamically links `.a` files in `/usr/local/lib` - c++

Question

I want to statically compile my program against another static library, for this example I'm using zeromq. Here is my CMakeLists.txt
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.6)
add_executable( test test.cpp )
find_library(ZMQ NAMES libzmq.a)
message(STATUS ${ZMQ})
target_link_libraries( test ${ZMQ} )
It finds the .a file when I run mkdir build && cd build && cmake ..
-- /usr/local/lib/libzmq.a
However, if I examine the link.txt file, the library is dynamically linked:
/usr/bin/c++ CMakeFiles/test.dir/test.cpp.o \
-o test -rdynamic /usr/local/lib/libzmq.a
The weird bit is that if I move the file to a different directory, say /usr/lib and run cmake .. once more, it locates the new path to the library:
-- /usr/lib/libzmq.a
But now it has magically changed to static linking:
/usr/bin/c++ CMakeFiles/test.dir/test.cpp.o \
-o test -rdynamic -Wl,-Bstatic -lzmq -Wl,-Bdynamic
The same thing applies to other libraries I'm linking to.
Why are all my libraries in /usr/local/lib being dynamically linked?

Answer 1

You should not use the path directly, and create an imported target instead, so you can explicitly declare it static:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.6)
add_executable( test test.cpp )
find_library(zmq_location NAMES libzmq.a)
message(STATUS ${zmq_location})
add_library(zmq STATIC IMPORTED)
set_target_properties(zmq PROPERTIES IMPORTED_LOCATION ${zmq_location})
target_link_libraries( test zmq )
This may lead to a situation where the library appears to be linked dynamically, but the cmake source code has the answer:
If the target is not a static library make sure the link
type is shared. This is because dynamic-mode linking can handle
both shared and static libraries but static-mode can handle only
static libraries. If a previous user item changed the link type to
static we need to make sure it is back to shared.
Essentially, it's letting the linker handle detecting that the library is static if currently in dynamic-mode.

Answer 2

The answer to my original question about the difference between /usr/local/lib and /usr/lib is that, by default, /usr/local/lib is not one of the implicit link directories. Therefore, a quick fix is to include this line in the config:
set(CMAKE_CXX_IMPLICIT_LINK_DIRECTORIES /usr/local/lib ${CMAKE_CXX_IMPLICIT_LINK_DIRECTORIES})
However, as pointed out in this other answer, referencing files directly is not the way to go, instead one should use add_library.

Answer 3

Here is my DEMO:
find_library(VLQ_LIB NAMES vlq-shared PATHS /usr/local/lib/ REQUIRED)
find_path(VLQ_HEADER vlq.hpp /usr/local/include)
target_link_libraries(myproj PUBLIC VLQ_LIB)
target_include_directories(myproj PUBLIC VLQ_HEADER)
but during run, you still need to copy the shared lib to /lib/ folder, for static lib, you can keep it under /usr/lib