The librarian, or archiver, creates and manages object code libraries. Object code libraries are collections of object files that are consolidated into a single file, called an archive. The benefit of an archive is that you can pass it to the linker and the linker will search the archive to resolve symbols needed during a link.

By convention, archives have the extension .hza. In fact, the format used for archives is compatible with PKWare's popular Zip format with deflate compression, so you can manipulate and browse archives using many readily available utilities for Windows.

Automatic archiving

The compiler driver hcl can create archives for you automatically using the -ar option. You will find this more convenient than manipulating archives by hand and we recommend that you use the compiler driver to construct archives.

Command syntax

You invoke the archiver using the following syntax:

har [ option ] archive file...

archive is the archive to operator on. file is an object file to add, replace, or delete from the archive according to option. option is a command-line option. Options are case sensitive and cannot be abbreviated.

Options

Option Description
-c Create archive
-d Delete member from archive
-r Replace member in archive/Add member to existing archive
-t List members of archive
-v List members of archive
-V Verbose mode