BSD archive file formats

[David Chisnall]

Hi Pete.  

The end of the man page says:

>      This manual page documents the ar(1) archive formats used by the 4.4BSD
>      and UNIX SVR4 operating system releases.

I think it's probably safe to assume that the 4.4BSD format was dropped at some indeterminate point in the past, probably when we moved from a.out to ELF format binaries.  If the tools currently shipped in the base system are not producing them, then support is probably not important - people can always install GNU binutils from ports if it is for some legacy software.

David

On 3 Aug 2012, at 12:36, pete wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> I'm working on archive file format support in MCLinker project.
> 
> GNU variant archive format is supported in MCLinker now. And from FreeBSD
> man pages, I can find there are some differences between BSD and GNU
> variants. However, when I try to check BSD variant on freebsd9 (i386), I
> can only find GNU variant archive files. And if using "ar" to make an
> archive file on freebsd9, I still get a GNU variant one.
> 
> So, I would like to ask if BSD variant supported/existing in BSD system. Or
> I missed something in configuring or others?
> 
> I'm new to BSD. Any information will be helpful!
> 
> Thanks,
> Pete
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