Static link LLVM in Linux release binaries

[piotr-maker]

Hi,
The Linux release binary currently depends on a system-installed libLLVM.so.21.

When downloading a prebuilt release, I would expect the compiler to run out of the box without requiring users to install a matching LLVM version manually.

Would it be possible to statically link LLVM into the release binary (or otherwise bundle the required LLVM libraries)?

Benefits:

• easier installation and onboarding,
• fewer runtime dependency issues,
• improved portability across Linux distributions,
• release artifacts become more self-contained.

At the moment, users may encounter errors similar to:

./zero: error while loading shared libraries: libLLVM.so.21: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Expected behavior:

./zero build hello.zero

should work immediately after downloading and extracting the release package, without requiring an additional LLVM installation.

Environment:

• OS: Ubuntu/Linux
• Architecture: amd64
• Zero release: v0.0.6
• Package: zero-linux-amd64

[jqcorreia]

Release https://github.com/jqcorreia/zero/releases/tag/v0.0.9 packages a binary with LLVM 21 statically linked.