Re: [Bug-tar] closeopen() rationale?

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Hi Bdale,

> A bug filed a while back by one of the users of my Debian packaging of tar
> noted that passing pipes via <() in bash on the tar command line had broken,
> and Ingo Saitz later tracked this down to the introduction of closeopen() on
> 2006-07-03, but noted there was no reason given for the change.

Looks like Debian ships an outdated version of tar. You reported this
bug on 2007-04-02 [1]. The rationale for the change was explained in
[2]. After a short discussion, Paul proposed a patch that removed the
need for closeopen[3]. This patch was applied to the CVS on
2007-04-04. So, since version 1.17 GNU tar no longer calls closeopen. 

Regards,
Sergey

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2007-04/msg00000.html
[2] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2007-04/msg00003.html
[3] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2007-04/msg00005.html