Hello trid users,
in march 2019 i run TrID with verbose option again on hundreds of
ar-archives and libraries described in general by
ark-ar-archiver.trid.xml as "ar archive". ( see appended
output/trid-v-old.txt)
On Microsoft often instead "a" extension "lib" extension is used like
in examples lldMinGW.lib or ghostscript gsdll32.lib. So in updated
ark-ar-archiver.trid.xml this is now expressed by
<Ext>AR/A/LBR/LIB</Ext>
According to newest Wikipedia page about "ar (Unix)" a specific mime
type instead "application/octet-stream" is used. This is now expressed
by line
<Mime>application/x-archive</Mime>
Furthermore i am missing a remark about the LBR extension. Where is
this extension used for ar-archives? Maybe nowadays an exotic system
like commodore c64?
The same consideration also applies to trid definition file
lib-coff.trid.xml. But here things are even worse. Now look at sample
libz.a found inside mysql-debug-4.1.22-hp-hpux11.00-hppa2.0w.tar.gz
for example. This is identified by file command utility version 5.36
as "current ar archive - PA-RISC1.1 relocatable library" ( see
appended output/file-5.36.txt). So this library variant as mentioned
in former posts is used in operating systems such as HP-UX 11.0 as
decribed on wikipedia page. There an file format is used named as
"SOM". See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Object_Model_(file_format)
That is other than "COFF" when looking at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_executable_file_formats.
This can also be seen when extracting library member by command like
"ar x". So HP libray contains object file like adler32.o. This is
identified by file tool correctly as "PA-RISC1.1 relocatable object".
Also trid identifies this as "PA-RISC 1.1 object code (generic)".
On the other hand the ghoscript library contains object files like
1.GSDLL32.dll. This is identied by file tool as "Intel 80386 COFF
object file". Trid also identifies this as "Intel 80386 Common Object
File Format (COFF) object".
So conclusion is:
By current lib-coff.trid.xml not only COFF libraries are described.
So this trid defintion is for file type maybe described by phrase like
"System V (or GNU) 32 bit library variant".
With new trid definition all libraries are now described ( see
appended output/trid-v-new.txt) more precisely . TrID definition, some
examples and output are stored in archive ar_trid.zip. I hope that the
XML file can be used in future version of triddefs.
With best wishes
J?rg Jenderek
