add prefer_static built-in option

By default, meson will try to look for shared libraries first before
static ones. In the meson.build itself, one can use the static keyword
to control if a static library will be tried first but there's no simple
way for an end user performing a build to switch back and forth at will.
Let's cover this usecase by adding an option that allows a user to
specify if they want dependency lookups to try static or shared
libraries first. The writer of the meson.build can manually specify the
static keyword where appropriate which will override the value of this
option.

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/docs/markdown/snippets/prefer_static.md b/docs/markdown/snippets/prefer_static.md
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+## New prefer_static built-in option
+
+Users can now set a boolean, `prefer_static`, that controls whether or not
+static linking should be tried before shared linking. This option acts as
+strictly a preference. If the preferred linking method is not successful,
+then Meson will fallback and try the other linking method. Specifically
+setting the `static` kwarg in the meson.build will take precedence over
+the value of `prefer_static` for that specific `dependency` or
+`find_library` call.