unable to developer build Qt

I am trying to do a developer build of Qt, with configure -developer-build -static. The result is that everything compiles all right but the linker /usr/bin/ld is unable to link. It runs forever, with the HD LED incessantly on and no visible progress. It does no damage and it can safely be stopped, killed and debugged, but it never finishes.

The build process stalls on the following command:


gmake[4]: Wejście do katalogu `/home/krzysztof/proj/qt/tools/assistant/tools/assistant'
g++ -Wl,-rpath-link,/home/krzysztof/proj/qt/lib -m64 -Wl,-rpath,/home/krzysztof/proj/qt/lib -Wl,-rpath,/home/krzysztof/proj/qt/lib -o ../../../../bin/assistant .obj/debug-static/fontpanel.o .obj/debug-static/aboutdialog.o .obj/debug-static/bookmarkdialog.o .obj/debug-static/bookmarkfiltermodel.o .obj/debug-static/bookmarkitem.o .obj/debug-static/bookmarkmanager.o .obj/debug-static/bookmarkmanagerwidget.o .obj/debug-static/bookmarkmodel.o .obj/debug-static/centralwidget.o .obj/debug-static/cmdlineparser.o .obj/debug-static/contentwindow.o .obj/debug-static/findwidget.o .obj/debug-static/filternamedialog.o .obj/debug-static/helpenginewrapper.o .obj/debug-static/helpviewer.o .obj/debug-static/indexwindow.o .obj/debug-static/installdialog.o .obj/debug-static/main.o .obj/debug-static/mainwindow.o .obj/debug-static/preferencesdialog.o .obj/debug-static/qtdocinstaller.o .obj/debug-static/remotecontrol.o .obj/debug-static/searchwidget.o .obj/debug-static/topicchooser.o .obj/debug-static/xbelsupport.o .obj/debug-static/collectionconfiguration.o .obj/debug-static/helpviewer_qwv.o .obj/debug-static/moc_fontpanel.o .obj/debug-static/moc_aboutdialog.o .obj/debug-static/moc_bookmarkdialog.o .obj/debug-static/moc_bookmarkfiltermodel.o .obj/debug-static/moc_bookmarkmanager.o .obj/debug-static/moc_bookmarkmanagerwidget.o .obj/debug-static/moc_bookmarkmodel.o .obj/debug-static/moc_centralwidget.o .obj/debug-static/moc_contentwindow.o .obj/debug-static/moc_findwidget.o .obj/debug-static/moc_filternamedialog.o .obj/debug-static/moc_helpenginewrapper.o .obj/debug-static/moc_indexwindow.o .obj/debug-static/moc_installdialog.o .obj/debug-static/moc_mainwindow.o .obj/debug-static/moc_preferencesdialog.o .obj/debug-static/moc_qtdocinstaller.o .obj/debug-static/moc_remotecontrol.o .obj/debug-static/moc_searchwidget.o .obj/debug-static/moc_topicchooser.o .obj/debug-static/moc_helpviewer_qwv.o .obj/debug-static/qrc_assistant.o .obj/debug-static/qrc_assistant_images.o    -L/home/krzysztof/proj/qt/lib -L/home/krzysztof/proj/qt/plugins/sqldrivers -lQtHelp -L/home/krzysztof/proj/qt/lib -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -L/usr/X11R6/lib64 -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -lQtCLucene -pthread -pthread -L/home/krzysztof/proj/qt/plugins/sqldrivers -lqsqlite -lQtWebKit -L../JavaScriptCore/debug -ljscore -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -pthread -lQtSql -pthread -pthread -lQtXml -pthread -pthread -lQtGui -ljpeg -lmng -ltiff -pthread -pthread -pthread -lpng -lSM -lICE -lXrender -lfontconfig -lfreetype -lXext -lX11 -lQtNetwork -pthread -pthread -lQtCore -lz -lm -ldl -pthread -lgthread-2.0 -lrt -lglib-2.0 -lpthread 

When I tried just configure -developer-build, it was unable to link webkit.

offhand have you also built every and all dependent .so’s for “debug”

Actually there are no dependent shared libraries in a static build. All object files are built for debugging.
In the webkit (shared) case, I tried to remove some object files from the build; the link time neede exploded when the number of files surpassed 1000. I do not know whether the order of files fed to the linker matters; it would be best to identify self-contained domain circles but I do not know the code base well enough so it would be a lot of work.

It seems the HD LED and general system unresponsiveness were due to thrashing. The thing linked in just 4 minutes in a console session (I have 1 GB RAM on x64, perhaps this is just too little).