I recently needed a .a file built for a port and opened a PR for it. Out of the several ports that I needed .a files from this was the only one that was missing the .a. I was curious to see how often ports have a .dylib but not a corresponding .a and vice versa so I made a list of all the packages who do not have matching files. I am sure there are many situations in this list where it is not practical or possible to have both but there is also probably plenty of opportunity for cleanup.
http://sprunge.us/6QWqeH Also thanks to Ryan Schmidt for sharing his wisdom on static linking in the github PR. -- David Gilman :DG<
