On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 11:38 AM Nick Bowler <nbow...@draconx.ca> wrote:
> On 2020-09-25, John Calcote <john.calc...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 10:45 AM Bob Friesenhahn < > bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote: > >> Exactly! It might as well be a tar file except that the 'ar' archiver > >> knows how to add/update/remove files from it and that is not possible > >> with a tar file. The ability to do incremental updates of the archive > >> file is important as objects are built/rebuilt. The 'make' program > >> itself already understands archive files. > >> > > > > I did not know this about libtool and convenience libraries. Do you have > > any historical notion of why this was done? I ask because this sort of > > behaviour total defeats the linker's ability to discard unused objects, > > does it not? > > As I mentioned elsethread, at least with current versions, this only > appears to actually happen when convenience libraries are linked into > libraries (which OP is doing). This _has_ to happen for the use case > that convenience libraries are described to be, well, convenient for: > linking a set of common object files into multiple shared libraries. > > Thanks Nick - that clears up my confusion and makes perfect sense. Sorry I missed your earlier comments on it. John
