[net.unix] Does anyone use ar

sasaki@harvard.ARPA (Marty Sasaki) (04/06/85)

Now that I've gotten into the software distribution biz (GNU EMACS) I've
learned all about tar and shar formats. Why doesn't anyone use ar
anymore? It does pretty much what you want and for bundling files
together doesn't offer any less functionality than tar or shar. Am I
missing something?
-- 
----------------
  Marty Sasaki				net:   sasaki@harvard.{arpa,uucp}
  Havard University Science Center	phone: 617-495-1270
  One Oxford Street
  Cambridge, MA 02138

jlo@ucbvax.ARPA (Jeff Lo) (04/08/85)

> Now that I've gotten into the software distribution biz (GNU EMACS) I've
> learned all about tar and shar formats. Why doesn't anyone use ar
> anymore? It does pretty much what you want and for bundling files
> together doesn't offer any less functionality than tar or shar. Am I
> missing something?
> -- 
> ----------------
>   Marty Sasaki				net:   sasaki@harvard.{arpa,uucp}
>   Havard University Science Center	phone: 617-495-1270
>   One Oxford Street
>   Cambridge, MA 02138

ar isn't too commonly used for things like distributions because it doesn't
have the same format in all versions of UNIX. For example, in 4.2BSD, (perhaps
somewhat earlier) ar was changed to be completey ascii rather than part binary
so that mailers could handle it. However, not everyone has 4.2, so shar was
invented since all you need to unpack it is the Bourne shell, which every UNIX
site has.

Jeff Lo

UUCP: ..!ucbvax!jlo
ARPA: jlo@ucbvax
CSNET: jlo%ucbvax@csnet-relay

gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (04/10/85)

> Why doesn't anyone use ar anymore?

Because there are at least 5 different "ar" archive formats in common
use.  As of UNIX System V Release 2 and 4.2BSD, the latest formats are
more-or-less compatible (the main difference, apart from object library
symbol tables, is that member names are /-terminated on SVR2 and space-
terminated on 4.2BSD) and support portable completely text archives.

If everyone had a common version of a recent "ar", it would be the most
convenient way to package sources for distribution.  Other alternatives
include the ASCII-header version of "cpio", which not everyone has either.

P.S.  It would be nice if the 4.2BSD "ar" would support /-terminated
member names in addition to space-terminated ones.