in general
we use ar rcs
command to create a static library on unix.
what does the flag 's' mean over here man page says
Do not generate an archive symbol table. This can speed up building a large library in several steps. The resulting archive can not be used with the linker. In order to build a symbol table, you must omit the S modifier on the last execution of ar, or you must run ranlib on the archive.
i am confused by the sentence "The resulting archive can not be used with the linker.".
do we have to use ranlib for creating the static library after the ar command? what is the purpose of the ranlib and how is it used?