shtool-arx (1)

shtool arx [-t|--trace] [-C|--command cmd] op archive file [file ...]

shtool arx is a wrapper around the archiving tool ar\|(1). It provides the ability to create archives out of existing archives, i.e., if one of file matches "\*(C`*.a\*(C'", the archive member files of file are used instead of file itself.

The trick of this command is the automatic handling of archive members which is especially interesting if one wants to construct a (usually top-level) library archive out of pre-built sub-library archives (usually staying inside subdirs) in a large source tree. For \s-1GNU\s0 libtool based projects, a similar functionality is provided by \s-1GNU\s0 libtool internally, too.

The following command line options are available.

-t, --trace

Shows the actually involved shell commands.

-C, --command cmd

Set the used ar\|(1) command to cmd instead of just \*(L"ar\*(R" (searched in $PATH).

 #   Makefile
 AR=ar
 RANLIB=ranlib
   :
 OBJS=foo.o bar.o
 LIBS=baz/libbaz.a quux/libquux.a
   :
 libfoo.a: $(OBJS) $(LIBS)
     shtool arx -C $(AR) rc libfoo.a $(OBJS) $(LIBS)
     $(RANLIB) libfoo.a

The \s-1GNU\s0 shtool arx command was originally written by Ralf S. Engelschall <[email protected]> in 1999 for \s-1GNU\s0 shtool. It was prompted by need to build libraries out of sub-libraries inside the \s-1OSSP\s0 project.

shtool\|(1), ar\|(1).