I would like to try out the couchbase-lite-c library, but I need a static version of the library so that it can be embedded in a (Windows) executable without having to ship a DLL.
Is that possible?
Thank you.
Possible to build it? Yes! Possible to ship it? Probably not due to the license.
As far as I know, the Apache License does not prohibit including the project as a static library.
You are correct about that but only the C SDK is licensed that way. LiteCore, which the SDK cannot function without, is licensed under the Business Source License.
I’m a little confused. How is Couchbase Lite supposed to be used within a commercial application?
The license is just for the source. The compiled binaries that Couchbase distributes are under different licenses.
Now, I understand. Does Couchbase offer a compiled static (Windows) library of the Couchbase-Lite-C SDK for commercial use?
Unfortunately no. It’s also not just one static library but more like 6 or 7 from various repos.
For me it doesn’t matter how much libs I have to integrate in my project. My goal is to only ship one exe without DLLs. As I can see, you ship only one DLL, so it should be also possible to ship one static lib.
It’s technically possible as you’ve noted but we don’t do it and don’t currently have any plans to do it. Sorry about that.