Facing lipo error while creating a single fat file

Question

I am trying to create a single .a file which will contain 3 different .a files so that I could share only one .a file. This is the command I am using

lipo -create -output ./libOutput.a ./libInput1.lib ./libInput2.lib ./libInput3.lib

but I am getting this lipo error:

./libInput1.lib and ./libInput2.lib have the same architectures (i386) and can't be in the same fat output file

Any idea how to get rid of this?

Answer 1

So this is the second time I have been here. The answer did not fix my problem. What I have found is that this is actually a bug in Xcode. What has happened both times is that I come and find this answer and that is not my problem and then I'm messing around for hours trying to figure out what's going on and the next thing I know Xcode crashes. Open up Xcode again and magic the problem is gone.

So I am adding my answer to help me remember this next time.

Answer 2

A workaround that worked for me (because I couldn't figure out what part of the building process was creating an additional architecture target to the compilation):just remove the architecture from one of the two .a libraries.

First, you can list the architecture with a simple file command:

$ file libwhatever.a
libwhatever.a: Mach-O universal binary with 4 architectures
libwhatever.a (for architecture armv7): current ar archive random library
libwhatever.a (for architecture armv7s): current ar archive random library
libwhatever.a (for architecture arm64): current ar archive random library
libwhatever.a (for architecture i386): current ar archive random library

$ file libfoo.a
libfoo.a: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
libfoo.a (for architecture i386): current ar archive random library
libfoo.a (for architecture x86_64): current ar archive random library

Then, this workaround is just about removing the i386 arch from the first libwhatever.a (which was supposed to be just for arm* arch in my case anyway).

lipo -remove i386 libwhatever.a -output /tmp/libwhatever.a
mv /tmp/libwhatever.a libwhatever.a

and then you can create/merge your .a files without any warning.