Re: [Bug-tar] incompatible checksums with solaris tar, or filenamebuffer too small?

[Joerg Schilling]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:

> address@hidden (Joerg Schilling) writes:
>
> > Are there plans to make gtar by default create archives that are
> > closer to the POSIX standard in the near future?
>
> Surely you mean "POSIX standards", as there are multiple POSIX
> standards in this area, and the latest version is evolving.
>
> That's being said, it's easy to generate POSIX 1003.1-2001 (pax)
> standard archives; just use "tar --format=pax".  If you want that to
> be the default, that's easy to arrange as well.  However, I don't
> recommend this; too many implementations mishandle this format right
> now.

It would help a lot if GNU tar was creating POSIX.1-1988 archives by _default_.
This is what other tar implementations understand without problems.

The main problem with GNU tar is that it started to become non-POSIX after
POSIX.1-1988 was released. This was not a problem in 1989 when most tar's have 
not yet been POSIX and (more important) when path names have been shorter than 
today.  GNU tar did start to create problems after the first source archives
with path names > 100 chars have been published.

And please note thar the way, GNU tar archives sparse files in "pax" mode is
not POSIX compliant: If the same keyword occures multiple times, then only the 
last occurence is valid.

Jörg

-- 
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