When you ask VMS Make what features it supports, "archives" is in the list.
EAGLE> bash -c "echo '\$(info \$(.FEATURES))' | make -f- 2>/dev/null"
\target-specific order-only second-expansion else-if shortest-stem undefine
oneshell archives
%NONAME-E-NOMSG, Message number 00000002
There is librarian support, as can be seen in default.c where AR is set
to "library/obj" and ARFLAGS to "/replace". It is known that the VMS
librarian and Unix ar behave differently. For example, librarian expects
an object library to exist for the "/replace" command while ar's "r"
command just creates a non-existing archive. So there is "some" support.
Maybe the feature shouldn't be set.
When you run the features/archives test, it fails.
features/archives .......................................
run_command_with_output(/lcl_root/make/tests/work/features/archives.log,):
make
-f /lcl_root/make/tests/work/features/archives.mk
/EAGLE$DQA0/alpha_root/gnv/make/make.exe.1: *** [libxx.a(a1.o)] Error
0x1086109c
/EAGLE$DQA0/alpha_root/gnv/make/make.exe.1: unable to open library 'libxx.a'
to lookup member 'a1.o'
/EAGLE$DQA0/alpha_root/gnv/make/make.exe.1: *** Archive member 'libxx.a(a1.o)'
may be bogus; not deleted
*** Test died (features/archives): Command failed: Cannot execute make -f
/lcl_r
oot/make/tests/work/features/archives.mk
As I understand, to run the tests you need gnv. So you are using gnv and
bash and not "plain" VMS. However, for VMS this is not really surprising:
$ write sys$output f$message(%x1086109c)
%LIBRAR-F-OPENIN, error opening !AS as input