ar Command Examples

Create, modify, and extract from Unix archives. Typically used for static libraries (.a) and Debian packages (.deb). See also: tar. More information: https://manned.org/ar.

• E[x]tract all members from an archive:

ar x {{path/to/file.a}}

• Lis[t] contents in a specific archive:

ar t {{path/to/file.ar}}

• [r]eplace or add specific files to an archive:

ar r {{path/to/file.deb}} {{path/to/debian-binary path/to/control.tar.gz path/to/data.tar.xz ...}}

• In[s]ert an object file index (equivalent to using ranlib):

ar s {{path/to/file.a}}

• Create an archive with specific files and an accompanying object file index:

ar rs {{path/to/file.a}} {{path/to/file1.o path/to/file2.o ...}}