Centos – Why is it okay to create this shared lib without -l flags for dependencies?

The rules regarding linking are getting jumbled in my head.

I have this little C file that I want to turn into a shared library. For the purpose of illustration, I’m calling a libuv function, but it could just as well have been calling a function from any library.

// func.c
#include <uv.h>

int func(void) {
  uv_close(NULL, NULL);

  return 0;
}

I compile it to a shared library, like so; note that I do not link with libuv by providing a -luv flag to cc:

$ cc -fpic -g -c func.c
$ cc -shared -o libfunc.so func.o
$ ldd ./libfunc.so
        statically linked
$

I don’t understand what that "statically linked" output actually means — I thought I’d created a shared lib (not a static lib) by specifying the -shared flag?

Anyhow, trying to make sense of things, I next tried creating my shared lib explicitly linking libuv:

$ cc -fpic -g -c func.c
$ cc -shared -o libfunc.so func.o -luv
$ ldd ./libfunc.so
        linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffe2b39a000)
        libuv.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuv.so.1 (0x00007f012d6d0000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f012d4a7000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f012d710000)
$

Can someone please explain what is happening between the two different "methods" of creating the libfunc.so shared library? Why did adding -luv to the cc flags result in those dependencies being created/recognized by ldd? Also: why did the first version (without -luv) even work? I thought the fact that I was using a function from another library obliged me to provide a correct -l argument during linking, meaning I thought the attempt at creating the shared library without specifying -luv would have failed(?)

Update: Following up on @JohnBollinger’s comment, I repeated the -fpic flag for the link command, but it doesn’t appear to have affected the observed behavior:

$ cc -fpic -g -c func.c
$ cc -fpic -shared -o libfunc.so func.o
$ ldd ./libfunc.so
        statically linked
$

$ cc -fpic -g -c func.c
$ cc -fpic -shared -o libfunc.so func.o -luv
$ ldd ./libfunc.so
        linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fff043f0000)
        libuv.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuv.so.1 (0x00007fea17963000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007fea1773a000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fea179a3000)
$

Update: my gcc/cc and ld versions:

$ gcc --version
gcc (Ubuntu 11.4.0-1ubuntu1~22.04) 11.4.0
Copyright (C) 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

$ cc --version
cc (Ubuntu 11.4.0-1ubuntu1~22.04) 11.4.0
Copyright (C) 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

$ ld --version
GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Ubuntu) 2.38
Copyright (C) 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software; you may redistribute it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License version 3 or (at your option) a later version.
This program has absolutely no warranty.
$

My Linux distro, fwiw, which is Ubuntu WSL, release jammy:

$ uname -a
Linux US193F98B0DB51 5.15.133.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2 #1 SMP Thu Oct 5 21:02:42 UTC 2023 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$

I assumed the fact that I was running WSL was irrelevant, but the fact that @JohnBollinger cannot reproduce my result in RHEL/Centos 8 has me uncertain about everything. I do not have access to a physical Linux box to compare behavior there.

Following up on @DarkSoda’s inquiry, it appears that both versions of libfunc.so (with and without -luv during linking) are the same size:

$ cc -fpic -g -c func.c
$ cc -fpic -shared -o libfunc.so func.o
$ ls -l ./libfunc.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 user user 20528 Jan 11 18:53 ./libfunc.so
$
$
$ rm -f ./func.o ./libfunc.so
$
$ cc -fpic -g -c func.c
$ cc -fpic -shared -o libfunc.so func.o -luv
$ ls -l ./libfunc.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 user user 20528 Jan 11 18:53 ./libfunc.so
$