Re: Extensions to Tar

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Paul and fellow tar developers,

Sorry for the delay in replying.

> It's OK as far as I know, but it would be helpful if you looked for
> other software to see what it did with those letters.  I would look at
> the letters that the latest 'star' uses, for example.
> 
> ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/star/alpha/star-1.4a21.tar.gz

I examined star, and it doesn't appear to use the 'E' or 'Y' type for 
anything. Then again, I could well be wrong, since I didn't find the code 
easy to read (most of the comments are in German?!)

> > Maybe, I'll look into it. The main problem is that it doesn't work for 
> > multi-volume file archives
> 
> Doesn't rmt have the same problem?  I don't see why a wrapper would fail
> for multi-volume files, if plain rmt succeeds.

Yes, I meant that rmt has that problem. I've since tried it and decided it 
is unsuitable for use on large files (as opposed to tapes): I don't 
think it can work around the 2Gb file size limit on Linux, and the 
archives cannot shrink, only grow (or at best stay the same size).

My shell script works around that by piping into split, but it's horrible 
=)

I've got my boss's signature to donate the code, now I just have to print 
the forms and sign them. Oh, and fix bugs =)

Cheers, Chris.
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