On Sun, Sep 13, 2015 at 1:11 PM, Eric Sunshine <sunshine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sun, Sep 13, 2015 at 6:17 AM, Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >> On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 05:34:59PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote: >>> I'm working on an old OS X machine. I needed to perform: >>> >>> AR=libtool >>> ARFLAGS="-static -o" >>> ... >>> make configure >>> ./configure ... >>> make >> >> Hrm. Your "$(AR)" is not really "ar" then, is it? It has been a long >> time since I played with libtool, but what is the reason that you are >> calling libtool and not "ar" in the first place. Is it that you do not >> have "ar" at all, and libtool performs some other procedure? If so, is >> there a more ar-compatible wrapper that can be used? > > This isn't GNU's libtool. It's Apple's libtool, an entirely different > beast, which is an 'ar' replacement and is needed when linking > Universal binaries containing code for more than one architecture, > such as 'ppc' and 'i386', so the same executable can run on multiple > architectures. This tool dates all the way back to at least NextStep > 3.1 when NeXT ported NextStep to Intel hardware (i486) from NeXT > computers (m68k). The name "Universal" is an Apple invention, but back > in the NeXT days, they were called Multi-Architecture Binaries (MAB) > or, colloquially, just FAT (for "fat"); there was a corresponding > "lipo" command (short for "liposuction") to "thin" out "fat" binaries. > NeXT's libtool predates GNU's libtool by a few years: May 1993 vs. > July 1997, respectively. When an attempt is made to use 'ar' on > Universal object files, it errors out saying that it can't be used > with such files and recommends 'libtool' instead. Thanks Eric. You did a much better job than I would have done. JW -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html