add a comment and a TODO

src/python/pants/backend/native/tasks/link_shared_libraries.py

@@ -201,6 +201,10 @@ def _execute_link_request(self, link_request):
            linker.extra_args +
            [os.path.abspath(obj) for obj in object_files] +
            # TODO: consider -rpath=dir whenever we support depending on dynamic libs?
+           # TODO: static libraries should be selectable with -L/-l as well, but that seems to be
+           # failing on Linux at least (loading a shared lib with ctypes fails with a missing
+           # symbol), even if -static is provided. Providing the paths directly works, but shouldn't
+           # be necessary. We might need some -Wl, prefixed options.
            list(link_request.external_static_archive_paths) +
            ['-L{}'.format(d) for d in link_request.external_lib_dirs] +
            ['-l{}'.format(l) for l in link_request.external_lib_names] +

src/python/pants/backend/native/tasks/native_external_library_fetch.py

@@ -76,6 +76,8 @@ class NativeExternalLibraryFiles(datatype([
     'include_dir',
     # TODO: we shouldn't have any `lib_names` if `lib_dir` is not set!
     'lib_dir',
+    # NB: the use of @memoized_property requires this datatype to be hashable, which requires all
+    # the fields to be hashable as well (therefore a tuple instead of a list).
     ('lib_names', tuple),
     ('static_archive_paths', tuple),
 ])): pass