sed: The sed command here searches for the string "$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o" and replaced it by "$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) -o" in the Makefile file. We make that modification so it will be easier to link bzip2 statically. ...Makefile | make -f -: Makefile is the last parameter of the sed command which indicates the file to search and replace in. sed normally sends the modified file to stdout (standard output) which will be your console. With the construction we use, sed's output will be piped to the make program. Normally when make is started it tries to find a number of files like Makefile. But we have modified the Makefile file so we don't want make to use it. The "-f -" parameter tells make to read it's input from another file, or from stdin (standard input) which the dash (-) implies. This is one way to do it. Another way would be to have sed write the output to a different file and tell make with the -f parameter to read that alternate file. LDFLAGS=-static: This is the second way we use to link a package statically. This is also the most common way. As you'll notice, the -all-static value is only used with the binutils package and won't be used throughout the rest of this book.