Re: [Bug-tar] tar and file meta data....

[Tim Kientzle]

On Oct 31, 2011, at 6:04 PM, Linda A. Walsh wrote:
> 
> [Tim]"zip" does exactly what you describe, and newer Info-Zip versions do a 
> good job of preserving Unix permissions, timestamps, etc.
> 
> Instantly, I think, but does it handle alternate data forks as exist on on 
> Windows, Linux and Apple.?  Windows NTFS has 'extended data' or streams,
> ACLs, and sensitivity/integrity label.  Linux has had them since the early
> 90's when XFS came with them.  They've been added to other file systems since 
> then.
> 
> And Apple's file system also supports alternate data/resource forks.

I'd be interested in an example showing a case where
it's actually useful to transfer extended data between
dissimilar systems.  Apart from ACLs (see below), I've
yet to see any case where it was useful to do so.

Are MacOS data forks ever useful on Windows?
Windows streams on Linux?

> star has (a multi tar format tar prog from the 90's has had
> support for ACLS/extended attrs -- …

Last I checked, Joerg only supported POSIX.1e ACLs with star.

> so...  plans for tar?

As part of my ongoing work on bsdtar, I've worked up a design
for storing NFS4 ACLs in tar archives:

http://code.google.com/p/libarchive/wiki/TarNFS4ACLs

I have some of this implemented.  I'd be very interested in
feedback on the design.

> When will it be usable for archiving again? -- I mean it's good for content 
> transport,
> but permissions -- not so good...since most of win's permissions are in the 
> ACL's.

Extending tar to work well with Windows would be a pretty complex undertaking.
Windows has a very different set of file types, filename patterns, and 
permissions
than POSIX utilities such as 'tar'.

Cheers,

Tim