Re: Boostrap tar cannot exec /bin/sh

[Carlos Sánchez de La Lama]

Hi Danny,

> sorry to butt in but why in the world does tar require a shell?

Agreed, but that's something that should be fixed upstream in tar.

> A simple (and ugly) workaround for you would be:
>
> static _Noreturn void
> xexec (const char *cmd)
> {
>   char *argv[4];
>
>   if (strchr(cmd, ' ') == NULL) {
>     argv[0] = cmd;
>     argv[1] = NULL;
>   } else {
>     argv[0] = (char *) "/bin/sh";
>     argv[1] = (char *) "-c";
>     argv[2] = (char *) cmd;
>     argv[3] = NULL;
>   }
>
>   execvp (argv[0], argv);
>   exec_fatal (cmd);
> }

Looks like that will fix it, true, thougth it might be a little bit too
agressive patching on guix side. I would be more confortable finding a
way to use current tar (until, hopefully, this gets solved upstream).

> Even better would be to use tar for creating archives and xz for
> compression (in your case, in "make").

Yup, if "de-nuking" the references is not a possibility (I am still
considering it), then I wil try changing the build system so instead of
"tar cvfa file.xz", "tar cv | xz" is used.

Thanks!

Carlos