Re: [Bug-tar] mac os x or general charset problem patch

[Joerg Schilling]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:

> > By the way, as Joerg always seemed to talk about star. Are the
> > created archives compatible to the ones of GNU tar?
>
> Our goal is interoperability, yes.  In the past we haven't been all
> that good at it, but we're trying to get better.

We need to distinct between interoperability problems iposed by the OS and
propblems caused by the tar implementation.

We are currently discussing an OS imposed problem.

The interoperability problems with GNU tar you may have in mind were 
caused by problems inside the GNU tar implementation. This has become much 
better than before, but GNU tar still (by default) creates archives that 
are not even POSIX.1-1988 compliant unless you use:

        ./configure DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT=USTAR

This has been and still is the main reason of interoperability problems.
Check e.g. MySQL that states that Sun's tar is bugy and thus cannot unpack
the MySQL sources while the real reason is just that the MySQL sources are not
in an archive format that is comatible to "tar".


Anyway: POSIX does not propose to use POSIX.1-1988 tar archives to deal with the
max os x problem but instead to use POSIX.1-2001 "pax" archives.

Jörg

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