David C. Rankin wrote:
> [...]
>   The immediate question is what packages currently rely on static
> libraries in TDE? So far the first FTBFS related to static libs has been
> tdebase/ksysguard relying on static libs from tdelibs.

A *.a archive does not mean it is always a static library. The autotools for 
example use them for internal libraries only. 'internal' means they get not 
installed when "make install" runs, they are linked internally against the 
produced binary, whatever it is.
If this internal *.a library is intended to be linked against an application 
its content is mostly compiled as NOPIC. If it is intended to be linked 
against a shared library its content must be compiled as PIC.
Thought this info could help you to sort out why the TDE buildsystem builds 
more than variant of this library.

jbe