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From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.bugs.sys5
Subject: Re: ranlib
Message-ID: <2332@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 4 Aug 89 17:31:21 GMT
References: <457@mccc.UUCP> <10659@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1920@prune.bbn.com> <10663@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 24

>->....  System V "ar" takes care of this
>-The only problem with this is that there is just no way to shut it off.
>
>Doesn't the "q" option do that?  Seems like it should.

Perhaps it should, but I checked the code, and it doesn't; the "rebuild
the symbol table" operation is performed whenever any operation that
updates the archive is performed ("ar d", "ar q", "ar m", and "ar r",
as well as "ar s" which *just* updates the symbol table).

I would prefer it that way - you may not want to update the archive with
"ar q" (since it can only be used to *add* members to an archive, not
replace existing members, nor move members, nor delete members), so a
"don't update the symbol table" feature needs to be a modifier
applicable to all such commands; given that, I'd prefer to have *all*
operations that update the archive update the symbol table by default,
to follow the Principle of Least Surprise.

Updating the table of contents on all operations that update the archive
isn't a problem if you update the library in one command, rather than
e.g. replacing each library member with a separate "ar" command; I
think, in fact, that the latter would even be faster with versions of
"ar" that *don't* automatically update the symbol table.  I can
appreciate that it might be less convenient to do so, though....