31 Dec
2018
31 Dec
'18
7:57 a.m.
Norman Wilson <norman(a)oclsc.org> wrote:
Nowadays ranlib is no longer a separate program: ar
recognizes object files and maintains an index if any are
present. I never especially liked that; ar is in
principle a general tool so why should it have a special
case for one type of file?
I'll agree with that. My first exposure to ar was from the version
in Software Tools. I was suprised to learn at some point that it
understood object file formats.
But in practice I don't know
anyone who uses ar for anything except libraries any more
I know one person. Brian Kernighan maintains an archive of his awk test
suite using ar. Or rather, he did until recently, when I got him to
move to using tar a few months ago. :-)
Arnold