[Lzip-bug] Tarlz 0.4: Use of 'ustar' format instead of 'posix'; question about future of Tarlz utility

[Timothy Beryl Grahek]

Hi,

Out of curiosity, I happened to look further into the differences between
the 'ustar' format and other formats such as 'gnu' and 'posix' and it
appears that the 'posix' format appears to lack any real disadvantages from
what I can see. But please correct me if I'm wrong. On that note, I have
noticed that 'ustar' has a file size limit of 8 GB. This really reduces its
value as a tar format for me because I envision myself someday archiving
more than 8 GB per file, especially considering how useful the multi-member
format is in Tarlz.

Consequently, I have two questions for you:

Would it be possible and desirable to (re-)implement Tarlz to use the
'posix' or other tar format that doesn't have file size limits?

Would you be interested in expanding the features of Tarlz to make it a
more feature rich utility? I say this because then it would be quite
comparable to software like 7-Zip, WinRAR, and Info-Zip, yet it is a much
safer format. Of course, simpler is always better, which is why I prefer
Lzip to these programs, but the fact that GNU Tar and other utilities like
that do not support the multi-member format (yet) leads me to think that it
would be extremely valuable to set up Tarlz in this way, at least until GNU
Tar and other utilities take up for multi-member format for Lzip. Even so,
Tarlz with more features would make it possible to have an archive
compressor that allows you extra options that aren't normally available in
regular Tar programs anyway, so even if utilities such as GNU Tar take up
the multi-member Lzip format, it still wouldn't be as useful as Tarlz since
Tarlz caters specifically to Lzip, so you can specify compression speeds
and specify compression of specific members in archives, the former of
which I happen to highly value.

Here is where I got my info on the different tar formats:
https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_chapter/tar_8.html

Anyhow, whatever you decide to do is always best, of course; Tarlz is
already a really useful program, but I am just pointing out how it might be
more useful to me. :-)

Best regards,

Timothy Beryl Grahek