NAME

shtool-arx - GNU shtool ar(1) extensional command

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

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 ""*.a"", 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 GNU libtool based projects, a similar functionality is provided by GNU libtool internally, too.

OPTIONS

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 "ar" (searched in $PATH).

EXAMPLE

 #   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

HISTORY

The GNU shtool arx command was originally written by Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com> in 1999 for GNU shtool. It was prompted by need to build libraries out of sub-libraries inside the OSSP project.