Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!encore!bzs
From: bzs@Encore.COM (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: IEEE 1003.2
Summary: utter brilliance...
Message-ID: <4407@xenna.Encore.COM>
Date: 16 Dec 88 04:39:28 GMT
References: <9137@smoke.BRL.MIL> <33251@think.UUCP> <14946@mimsy.UUCP>
Organization: Encore Computer Corp, Marlboro, MA
Lines: 15

In article <14946@mimsy.UUCP>, chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
> For that matter, why do we need object archives in the first place?
> They are just a hack to save space (and perhaps, but not necessarily,
> time).  How about /lib/libc/*.o?
> 
> (About 1/2 :-) ---the file system is *supposed* to be clean enough and
> fast enough to support this sort of thing; why *are* we working against
> it?)

For that matter why not just combine tar and ar and add a flag to tar
to include an archive symbol table (and have tar recognize this has
been done on input.) It seems the two functions of these utilities
barely needs to be distinguished. A simple shell script could replace
"ar" for backwards compatability. Or vice versa.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||