duckdb-static

Prebuilt static DuckDB libraries for KoliStat projects, with the parquet + json extensions linked in. Built from DuckDB's own CMake (not the conan recipe, which breaks the parquet extension on MSVC).

Why: DuckDB ships only a DLL for Windows. Linking the static library lets a consumer ship a single binary (no duckdb.dll) and reuse one DuckDB build across projects. First consumer: bedevere-desktop.

Artifacts

Each GitHub Release (tag v<X.Y.Z>-win-x64) carries duckdb-static-v<X.Y.Z>-windows-x64.zip containing:

• lib/ — duckdb_static.lib + parquet_extension.lib + json_extension.lib
  • duckdb_generated_extension_loader.lib, plus the third-party static libs (re2, fmt, zstd, fsst, utf8proc, mbedtls, yyjson, …). These are separate from duckdb_static.lib (DuckDB links them only into its shared target), so the consumer links the whole set. The generated loader provides ExtensionHelper::LoadAllExtensions, which the DuckDB ctor calls to static-load parquet + json — without it a host that links only duckdb_static.lib fails with unresolved external LoadAllExtensions.
• include/ — the DuckDB C++ public headers (duckdb.hpp + tree).

Building / releasing

Actions → "Build static DuckDB (Windows)" → Run workflow:

• duckdb_ref — the duckdb/duckdb tag. Default v1.5.1, pinned to match stats_duck's ABI and bedevere-desktop's DuckDB. Bump in lockstep.
• do_release — check to publish a GitHub Release with the artifact.

The build compiles DuckDB from source (large codebase — expect a long run).

Build constraints (learned the hard way)

• Runner pinned to windows-2022 (MSVC 14.4x). DuckDB v1.5.1's bundled fmt uses stdext::checked_array_iterator, an MSVC STL extension that the VS "18" toolset (MSVC 14.51, now on windows-latest) removed. Bump only once the pinned duckdb_ref ships an fmt that compiles on the newer toolset.
• Extensions are enabled with -DBUILD_EXTENSIONS — the actual CMake cache variable. CORE_EXTENSIONS is only a Makefile alias that maps onto it; passing -DCORE_EXTENSIONS to cmake directly is silently ignored and yields a green but core-only lib (no parquet/json). Paired with -DEXTENSION_STATIC_BUILD=1, and the parquet_extension / json_extension targets are built explicitly.

Consuming (sketch)

Download the release zip and add imported static targets, e.g.:

# lib/ + include/ extracted to ${DUCKDB_STATIC_DIR}
file(GLOB DUCKDB_LIBS "${DUCKDB_STATIC_DIR}/lib/*.lib")
add_library(duckdb_static INTERFACE)
target_include_directories(duckdb_static INTERFACE "${DUCKDB_STATIC_DIR}/include")
# All the libs in lib/ + DuckDB's Windows system deps. DUCKDB_STATIC_BUILD makes
# the headers reference plain (non-dllimport) symbols.
target_link_libraries(duckdb_static INTERFACE ${DUCKDB_LIBS} ws2_32 rstrtmgr bcrypt)
target_compile_definitions(duckdb_static INTERFACE DUCKDB_STATIC_BUILD)
# parquet + json are auto-loaded by the DuckDB ctor via the generated loader
# lib — no manual LoadStaticExtension<T>() call needed. Build consumers /MT to
# match these libs' static CRT.

Status: validated. First green release is v1.5.1-win-x64 — parquet and json linkage confirmed via dumpbin on the artifact (ParquetReader / ColumnReader / thrift / snappy and JSONCommon / JSONReader symbols present).