g++ linking libs instead of *.o containing static members leads to segfault - static

Question

I observed segfaults if I used linking libraries instead of linking all the primary compiler output with g++. This problem occurs with libraries with classes with static members. And I don't find a solution with libs. What went wrong?
Simplified: I created two libraries called alpha and beta. Alpha contains a static member (race conditions were excluded). The library alpha depends on beta. And alpha and beta depend on a third library, the public library gamma (in my case Cairo).
The static member is defined as private within a class Alpha and access via getters and setters with mutex locks.
I compile my the source code for alpha
g++ -fPIC -DPIC `pkg-config --cflags gamma` alpha*.cpp -c
ar rcs alpha.a alpha*.o
and beta, respectively
g++ -fPIC -DPIC `pkg-config --cflags gamma` beta*.cpp -c
ar rcs beta.a beta*.o
Now, I want to use these libs (alpha, beta, and gamma) in my program delta. I tried two different ways to compile and link in two steps. First, compile and simply link the compiled objects:
g++ -fPIC -DPIC `pkg-config --cflags gamma` delta.cpp -c -o delta.o
g++ -fPIC -DPIC alpha*.o beta*.o delta.o `pkg-config --libs gamma` -o delta
This compiles, links and runs. Without any problems.
But if I want to use the .a libs instead and try:
g++ -fPIC -DPIC `pkg-config --cflags gamma` delta.cpp -c -o delta.o
g++ -fPIC -DPIC -lalpha -lbeta delta.o `pkg-config --libs gamma` -o delta
This compiles and links. But produces a segfault on running. During the very first access to the static member.

Answer 1

g++ -fPIC -DPIC -lalpha -lbeta delta.o pkg-config --libs gamma -o delta
Note that this command line is generally incorrect. See this post. You should use this command instead:
g++ delta.o -lalpha -lbeta `pkg-config --libs gamma` -o delta
This may or may not solve your crash.
In general, you are probably depending on the order of initialization of globals, which is somewhat hard to control. The best advice is to not do that.
What do I mean by order of initialization? Consider these two files:
// a.cc
const int foo = 42;
// b.cc
extern int foo;
const int bar = foo;
Question: what is the value of bar?
Answer: you can't generally tell. It could be 0, 42, and I believe could also be some other random value.