Why are libraries so flaky on macosx?

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Henrik Goldman - 29 Oct 2006 10:53 GMT

Hi,

I have an application which consist of some static libraries (*.a) created
either by me or 3rd parties. I often face the problem though that the
libraries are getting out of date. This usually happens if I copy them or
put them into version control.

/usr/bin/ld: table of contents for archive: ../lib/hlsupport.a is out of
date; rerun ranlib(1) (can't load from it)

collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Another thing I noticed is that they often loose the icon inside finder from
being a library to just becoming a document (unknown type).

Can anyone explain why this happens and what one can do about it?

-- Henrik

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Patrick Machielse - 29 Oct 2006 11:28 GMT

> I have an application which consist of some static libraries (*.a) created
> either by me or 3rd parties. I often face the problem though that the
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> /usr/bin/ld: table of contents for archive: ../lib/hlsupport.a is out of
> date; rerun ranlib(1) (can't load from it)

This happens because the file system modification date of the archive is
later than the date of the .a TOC. Use 'cp -p' to copy the static lib to
preserve the original file system flags.

<http://users.actcom.co.il/~choo/lupg/tutorials/libraries/unix-c-librari
es.html>

> Another thing I noticed is that they often loose the icon inside finder from
> being a library to just becoming a document (unknown type).

This may have the same cause. But generally I don't whorry about icons
for static libs ;-)

patrick

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Michael Ash - 29 Oct 2006 13:12 GMT

> Hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> /usr/bin/ld: table of contents for archive: ../lib/hlsupport.a is out of
> date; rerun ranlib(1) (can't load from it)

This is not an OS X specific problem, but rather a problem with any UNIX.

If your library is simple (built with a single file), create a raw .o file
rather than a .a, and problem solved.

Otherwise, a good approach can be to check it out of version control in
one place, but have the project refer to it in another place. Before that
part, have a shell script build phase (or a thing in your makefile if
you're using those) which copies the library to the temporary location and
runs ranlib on it.

Signature

Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software

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Henrik Goldman - 30 Oct 2006 07:11 GMT

Thanks to both of your suggestions.

Everything turned out good with the cp -p command.

-- Henrik

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Mac Forum / Programming / Mac Programming / October 2006

Why are libraries so flaky on macosx?