Re: ar(1) issue building coreutils on 64-bit AIX

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello all,

* Peter Rosin wrote on Fri, Aug 17, 2007 at 09:24:39PM CEST:
> 
> Just pointing out that for libtool the archiver is never invoked as
> either of:
>       $AR $AR_FLAGS cru ...
>       $AR $AR_FLAGS x ...
>       $AR $AR_FLAGS t ...
> it is always one of these instead:
>       $AR $AR_FLAGS ...
>       $AR x ...
>       $AR t ...
> 
> That usage of $AR_FLAGS seems consistent with your description
> of $ARFLAGS in automake.

Ah, so the chance of reconciliation with Automake's ARFLAGS just got a
wee bit better.  Except that Automake uses
  $(AR) $(ARFLAGS) LIBRARY OBJECTS...

and Libtool would like to not have a space after ${ARFLAGS}, if it wants
to support the w32 LIB program.  This, however, would not work with the
$(ARFLAGS) macro in a makefile: it is not portable to assume that 'make'
will honor trailing white space in a macro set in the makefile (besides
the fact that I think it is error-prone):  pmake for example does not,
contray to Posix.  However, it does honor it on the command line, like:
  pmake "ARFLAGS=cru "

So then I thought of ugly hacks like
  AC_SUBST([ARFLAGS], ["cru ''"])

but that will then fail when $ARFLAGS is used in scripts like libtool
(could maybe be hacked around?), or
  AC_SUBST([ARFLAGS], ["cru \\
 "])

but even that will not get pmake to behave.  I can get pmake to add a
space with this:
  ARFLAGS = cru
  ARFLAGS +=

but of course that is not portable either, and I haven't yet found a way
to add one for Solaris 2.6 make.

So pick and choose:
- drop $AR_FLAGS in libtool, instead use ${ARFLAGS} and keep in sync
  with Automake's idea of it
- keep $AR_FLAGS and allow for LIB to be used as archiver from within
  Libtool.

FWIW, I don't currently see how to easily get Automake to allow LIB as
archiver for *_LIBRARIES.

Cheers,
Ralf