# ar65 Users Guide

## Ullrich von Bassewitz

ar65 is an archiver for object files generated by ca65. It allows to create archives, add or remove modules from archives, and to extract modules from existing archives.

## 1. Overview

## 2. Usage

## 3. Copyright

## 1. Overview

ar65 is a replacement for the libr65 archiver that was part of the cc65 C compiler suite developed by John R. Dunning. libr65 had some problems and the copyright does not permit some things which I wanted to be possible, so I decided to write a completely new assembler/linker/archiver suite for the cc65 compiler. ar65 is part of this suite.

## 2. Usage

The archiver is called as follows:

> `

>             Usage: ar65 <operation ...> lib file|module ...
>             Operations are some of:
>                     r       Add modules
>                     d       Delete modules
>                     t       List library table
>                     v       Increase verbosity (put before other operation)
>                     x       Extract modules
>                     V       Print the archiver version

> `

You may add modules to a library using the `'r'` command ('a' is deprecated). 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 r 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 v v r mysubs.lib ofiles/sub1.o ofiles/sub2.o

> `

will verbose 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 `'t'` command prints a table of all modules in the library ('l' is deprecated). Any module names on the command line are ignored.

Example:

> `

>             ar65 tv 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).

## 3. Copyright

ar65 (and all cc65 binutils) are (C) Copyright 1998-2000 Ullrich von Bassewitz. For usage of the binaries and/or sources the following conditions do apply:

This software is provided 'as-is', without any expressed or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.
3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.