Re: [Gnu-arch-users] tar for the base revision

[Andrew Suffield]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 07:18:13PM -0400, Miles Bader wrote:
> >     * archival programs that stick to a credible standard
> > 
> >     * archival programs that are (essentially) universally ported
> >       or implemented
> > 
> >     * archival programs without stupid, arbitrary limits
> 
> How is cpio by these measures?  I personally dislike it because I find the
> user-interface annoying, but I note that many distro package formats seem to
> use it (e.g., dpkg, rpm), which suggest that it might have some good
> properties.

It doesn't. dpkg does not use cpio; it uses ar and tar.

rpm does not use cpio, it uses cpio-plus-gunk, to work around one of
the worst limitations of cpio:

It does not store the owner and group by name.

So rpm appends some extra data which it then uses to extract the files
with the correct user and group.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
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