Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!apple!rutgers!att!occrsh!uokmax!rmtodd
From: rmtodd@uokmax.UUCP (Richard Michael Todd)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Minix ar compatability
Message-ID: <3236@uokmax.UUCP>
Date: 19 May 89 20:20:50 GMT
References: <3234@uokmax.UUCP>
Reply-To: rmtodd@uokmax.UUCP (Richard Michael Todd)
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Oklahoma, ECN
Lines: 20

In article <3234@uokmax.UUCP> vlstemen@uokmax.UUCP (Vincent L. Stemen) writes:
>    Minix ar is incompatable with Berkley unix's ar.  I'm assuming
>that it is bacause minix is using v7 standards and they must be 
>different than system 5.  Minix's sturcture ar_hdr uses some chars, some
>ints, etc.  The Berkeley's structure uses all character arrays.  Has
>anybody worked on modifying minix's ar to be compatable?  If so, could
>you post it or mail it to me?

First of all, I think that the Minix ar format is the same as the v7 ar
format and this is the same as the standard Berkeley ar.  What's confusing
you is that our system here, uokmax, running Encore's 4.2, is a Berkeley
system, but it uses the System V object code format (COFF).  So the "problem"
is that Minix doesn't understand SysV COFF format ar files.  I'm not sure
why this is a problem, since Minix object libraries wouldn't seem to be
much good on our 32332-based Multimax :-), and for general-purpose 
file archiving you can use tar, which *is* compatible across systems.
-- 
Richard Todd	Fido:1:147/1     USSnail:820 Annie Court,Norman OK 73069
Try one of these: rmtodd@chinet.chi.il.us, rmtodd@killer.dallas.tx.us,
   rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  or ...!sun!texsun!uokmax!rmtodd.