Re: [Bug-tar] need help with tar output stability problem

[Bdale Garbee]

On Wed, 10 Nov 2010 22:19:12 -0800, Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 11/10/2010 10:14 PM, Bdale Garbee wrote:
> > On Wed, 10 Nov 2010 21:59:03 -0800, Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> This file name is exactly 100 bytes long, and if I recall, that used
> >> to be a problem area in GNU tar.  The 1.24 tarball contains a longlink
> >> representation of the file (which isn't right), whereas the 1.23 tarball
> >> is right.
> > 
> > Ugh.  Smoking gun.  I was carrying a patch around for ages to try and
> > work around this bug, which tripped a bug in dpkg for a while.  Finally
> > realized it was no longer needed and removed it from my build of 1.24.
> 
> Ah, sorry, I'm a bit confused.  Is your theory that this age-old patch
> broke 1.24? 

My theory is that every version of Debian tar for quite a while was
"broken", and 1.24 is when it got "right" again.  I'll work with Joey on
this some more tomorrow and see if we can confirm that.

> If so, we don't need to do anything upstream.  If not, then please let us
> know (for example, what patch is it, and what test case illustrates the
> need for the patch).

I think you've given us the clue we needed to fix our problem, we'll be
back if not.  Thanks!

Bdale

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