diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index d61b9322..d62da517 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -88,6 +88,13 @@ Libweston was first introduced in Weston 1.12, and is expected to
 continue evolving through many Weston releases before it achieves a
 stable API and feature completeness.
 
+Libweston's primary purpose is exporting an API for creating Wayland
+compositors. Libweston's secondary purpose is to export the weston_config API
+so that third party plugins and helper programs can read `weston.ini` if they
+want to. However, these two scopes are orthogonal and independent. At no point
+will the compositor functionality use or depend on the weston_config
+functionality.
+
 
 API/ABI (in)stability and parallel installability
 -------------------------------------------------
diff --git a/ivi-shell/meson.build b/ivi-shell/meson.build
index 057e3973..7a176994 100644
--- a/ivi-shell/meson.build
+++ b/ivi-shell/meson.build
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ if get_option('shell-ivi')
 		'hmi-controller',
 		srcs_ivi_hmi,
 		include_directories: include_directories('..', '../shared'),
-		dependencies: dep_libweston,
+		dependencies: [ dep_libweston, dep_libshared ],
 		name_prefix: '',
 		install: true,
 		install_dir: dir_module_weston
diff --git a/libweston/meson.build b/libweston/meson.build
index f6e2a0fd..fa795011 100644
--- a/libweston/meson.build
+++ b/libweston/meson.build
@@ -4,7 +4,6 @@ deps_libweston = [
 	dep_libm,
 	dep_libdl,
 	dep_libdrm_headers,
-	dep_libshared,
 	dep_xkbcommon,
 ]
 srcs_libweston = [
@@ -75,6 +74,7 @@ lib_weston = shared_library(
 	link_args: [ '-export-dynamic' ],
 	install: true,
 	version: '0.0.@0@'.format(libweston_revision),
+	link_whole: lib_libshared,
 	dependencies: deps_libweston
 )
 
diff --git a/shared/meson.build b/shared/meson.build
index 09020430..5b0d8d13 100644
--- a/shared/meson.build
+++ b/shared/meson.build
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ lib_libshared = static_library(
 	srcs_libshared,
 	include_directories: include_directories('..'),
 	dependencies: deps_libshared,
+	pic: true,
 	install: false
 )
 dep_libshared = declare_dependency(