On Wednesday, 18 July 2018 at 11:39:30 -0600, arnold@skeeve.com wrote: > "John P. Linderman" wrote: > >> I guess it [ar] lives on in the creation of "libraries" that could be >> loaded by compilers, although I think shared objects have largely replaced >> archive files, and I'm not sure if archive files are even accepted any more. > > Archive files (static libraries) are alive and well and work just fine, > on Linux and every other *nix that I know about. The format is even > used on Windows for static libraries and for whatever you call them when > linking dynamic libraries (they provide the symbols, but not the dll). This has been the case for FreeBSD too for as long as I can recall. I thought it was the case for all .a libraries. $ uname -a FreeBSD eureka.lemis.com 10.2-STABLE FreeBSD 10.2-STABLE #2 r290972: Wed Nov 25 11:38:38 AEDT 2015 grog@stable.lemis.com:/usr/obj/eureka/home/src/FreeBSD/svn/10/sys/GENERIC amd64 $ file /usr/lib/libc.a /usr/lib/libc.a: current ar archive Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA