The archiver is called as follows:
Usage: ar65 <operation> lib file|module ...
Operation is one of:
a Add modules
d Delete modules
l List library contents
x Extract modules
V Print the archiver version
You may add modules to a library using the `a' command. If the library does not exist, it is created (and a warning message is printed which you may ignore if creation of the library was your intention). You may specify any number of modules on the command line following the library.
If a module with the same name exists in the library, it is replaced by the new one. The archiver prints a warning, if the module in the library has a newer timestamp than the one to add.
Here's an example:
ar65 a mysubs.lib sub1.o sub2.o
This will add two modules to the library `mysubs.lib' creating the library if necessary. If the library contains modules named sub1.o or sub2.o, they are replaced by the new ones.
Modules names in the library are stored without the path, so, using
ar65 a mysubs.lib ofiles/sub1.o ofiles/sub2.o
will add two modules named `sub1.o' and `sub2.o' to the library.
Deleting modules from a library is done with the `d' command. You may not give a path when naming the modules.
Example:
ar65 d mysubs.lib sub1.o
This will delete the module named `sub1.o' from the library, printing an error if the library does not contain that module.
The `l' command prints a list of all modules in the library. Any module names on the command line are ignored.
Example:
ar65 l mysubs.lib
Using the `x' command, you may extract modules from the library. The modules named on the command line are extracted from the library and put into the current directory.
Note: Because of the indexing done by the archiver, the modules may have a changed binary layout, that is, a binary compare with the old module (before importing it into the library) may yield differences. The extracted modules are accepted by the linker and archiver, however, so this is not a problem.
Example for extracting a module from the library:
ar65 x mysubs.lib sub1.o
The `V' command prints the version number of the assembler. If you send any suggestions or bugfixes, please include your version number.
In addition to these operations, the archiver will check for, and warn about duplicate external symbols in the library, every time when an operation does update the library. This is only a warning, the linker will ignore one of the duplicate symbols (which one is unspecified).