Running ranlib after installation - okay or not?

[Ian Lance Taylor]

kaih@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) writes:

> ian@airs.com (Ian Lance Taylor)  wrote on 01.09.05 in <m3wtm0ircw.fsf@gossamer.airs.com>:
> 
> > a.out archives used to work this way too, e.g. on SunOS 4.  The idea
> > was that people would often use ar without updating the symbol table.
> > Thus the symbol table has a timestamp.  The linker checks that the
> > timestamp of the symbol table is not older than the file modification
> > time of the archive.
> 
> But then all you have to do is copy the timestamp, too. This sounded more  
> like saving inode numbers and stuff ...
> 
> I am, of course, accustomed to a cp that can copy timestamps. And I see  
> that my install also has a -p option ...

We're talking SunOS 4 here, which was just acting as earlier systems
did.  Back then the options to cp were -i, -f and -r.  And install was
a new fangled shell script that most packages didn't use.

Ian