3.0ar vs 3.5[1]ar (was Re: Need advice/help on upgrading to 3.51)

[Lenny Tropiano]

In article <WJC.89Apr15131656 at ho5cad.ho5cad.ATT.COM> wjc at ho5cad.ATT.COM 
(Bill Carpenter) writes:

..[ discussion about the old libraries under 3.0 and compatibility left out ]..

|>
|>For 3.5, they shipped utilities (I think called "3.0ar" and "3.0nm")
|>for just this purpose, but I think they didn't do that for 3.51. (So
|>if you're going from 3.0->3.51, save your own copies of "ar" and
|>"nm".)  Of course all the libraries they ship you are already
|>converted, except there was some slip up for "libcvdi.a" (the graphics
|>library), so you have to convert that yourself if you want to use it.
|>(It only takes a couple minutes.)
|>

No you shouldn't have any problem using 3.0 archive library with 3.51, as is.
The only thing you should be aware of is that under 3.0, there was no
concept of FLEXNAMES (ie. variable names greater than 8 characters).  
Everything was significant to only 8 characters, whereas with FLEXNAMES you
can go to as many as you like.  Linking a program with both 3.0 archives
and 3.5[1] archives (5.0 archive format vs. 5.2 archive format) works
without even converting them.  If you want to convert them to the new format,
(5.2 format) you can use the "convert" command present with the 3.5[1]
development set.

$ convert
usage: convert [-5] infile outfile

$ convert OLD5.0ARCHIVE NEW5.2ARCHIVE

The -5 option is to go from the new format to old format for backwards
compatibility on older systems.

							-Lenny
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