Ar

lastmod 2022-03-15created 2014-09-198 edits

(If you are looking for AR, the abbreviation for augmented reality, see the Augmented reality page.)

Archive, a command-line tool for static libraries.

Flags

• d: Delete modules from the archive. If there are no files to delete, the archive is left untouched.
• t: Print the list of files in the archive.
• v: Verbose mode, which shows details. With this option, information such as file size and modification time is also printed.
• x: Extract object files from the archive. If the v option is given, the names of the extracted files are printed.
• r: Add the object file if it is new, replace it if it already exists.
• c: Do not print a warning message even if the libhoge.a file does not exist.
• u: Compare object file timestamps and replace only if the file is newer.
• s: Create an archive index, like ranlib. Without an archive index, linking is slower, and depending on the system environment an error occurs. The archive index can be viewed with nm -s.

Example

ar cr [라이브러리 이름] [오브젝트 파일들]
ar rcus [라이브러리 이름] [오브젝트 파일들]

Create an archive.

ar ds [라이브러리 이름] [오브젝트 파일들]

Remove objects from an existing archive file.

ar tv [라이브러리 이름]

View the contents of the archive.

ar xv [라이브러리 이름]

Extract files from the archive.

Merge archive

If you want to merge several static archive files, proceed as follows.

1. Split out the Object files using ar x {라이브러리}.
2. Merge all Object files using ar cr {결과 라이브러리} *.o.
3. Create the index table using ranlib {결과 라이브러리}.

Alternatively, you can use libtool.

Favorite site

• Hack #17: ar - Working with static libraries
• ar usage: creating archive files
• binutils: Structure of static libraries - ar, ranlib ¹
• Static libraries and ar, ranlib, nm

References