building libraries under SYSV

[Michael Shapiro]

The GRASS Gmakefiles provide a "macro" for building libraries: $(AR)
This macro runs "ar" and then it runs either "ranlib" (for BSD Unix) or
"lorder|tsort" for SYSV Unix. This has worked well until the 4.0
release. The gis library now has too many .o files for some SYSV
machines ("tsort" runs out of memory or something like that).

I think I have found the solution to this problem, but I want to know
how portable it is. The "ranlib" function essentially builds a symbol
table for the loader and adds it to the library. On the SYSV machines
that we have here at CERL, it appear that the "ar" command can create
this symbol table: ar -ts

This means we use "ar ts lib.a"  on SYSV machines to do what "ranlib"
does on BSD machines.

Would programmers please try this idea out on their machines and let me
know if I have hit upon a portable solution to the "lorder|tsort"
problem.

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Michael Shapiro
U.S. Army CERL                  email:   shapiro at zorro.cecer.army.mil
Environmental Division          phone:   (217) 352-6511  ext 526
P.O. Box 9005                   fax:     (217) 373-7222
Champaign, Ill. 61826-9005
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