Re: [Bug-tar] GNU Tar and OS X resource forks

[Chuck Swiger]

Hi--

On Mar 7, 2010, at 7:11 AM, Tony wrote:
> With OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), Apple switched (again) to bsdtar.  OS X 10.5 
> included an Apple-Modified GNU Tar 1.15.1 that was resource fork aware.  I 
> would like to use GNU Tar 1.22 and wanted to know if 1.22 was OS X resource 
> fork aware, or if a patch exists that can make it so.

10.6 comes with both bsdtar 2.6.2 and GNU tar 1.17 (which was the last version 
under GPLv2); change the /usr/bin/tar symlink to point to gnutar instead if you 
prefer.

However, both support resource forks via the same "._FILE" mechanism (or 
FILE/rsrc/NamedFork) implemented at the filesystem level.  Quick testing 
suggests that both bsdtar and gnutar both create archives and can extract files 
with resource forks properly, and they also do fine extracting an archive 
created with the other flavor of tar.  I'm unsure of what you hope to gain, but 
you should be able to build and use gnutar 1.22 instead if you like....

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck