Well, assuming that by "statically linking" you mean in the c sense, that's exactly what GraalVM native image does today, it statically analyzes the JAR for rea

Well, assuming that by "statically linking" you mean in the c sense, that's exactly what GraalVM native image does today, it statically analyzes the JAR for reachability only compiling the methods/classes in use. This works but it's also what makes native-image difficult to use and brittle. It's hard, and some might argue impossible, to statically analyze reachability in a dynamic language like java that allows for runtime class loading and redefinition. As it turns out, Java is much closer to javascript than C++ in terms of dynamic runtime behavior.