Re: [Bug-cpio] [PATCH] Add option "--reproducible" for reproducible archives

[Harald Hoyer]

On 06.11.2014 19:30, Mario Blättermann wrote:
> Am 06.11.2014 um 16:16 schrieb Harald Hoyer:
>> On 08.07.2014 11:11, Harald Hoyer wrote:
>>> On 03.07.2014 12:30, address@hidden wrote:
>>>> From: Harald Hoyer <address@hidden>
>>>>
>>>> Having the same files and directories on different locations results in
>>>> different archives, because the inode numbers and devices are not the
>>>> same.
>>>>
>>>> The "--reproducible" flag will assign increasing inode numbers to
>>>> the files, resulting in equal archives for equal files and directories.
>>>>
>>>> A hash table is used to find already assigned inode numbers for linked
>>>> files.
>>>> ---
>>>>  src/copyout.c | 13 ++++++++++++-
>>>>  src/extern.h  |  5 +++++
>>>>  src/global.c  |  3 +++
>>>>  src/main.c    | 14 ++++++++++++--
>>>>  src/util.c    | 60 
>>>> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>>  5 files changed, 92 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>>>>
>>>> ...
>>>
>>> Sergey, any comments?
>>>
>>
>> ping???? Is this list/maintainer alive?
>>
> Seems the project itself is dead. The latest stable version has been released 
> in
> 2011. Earlier this year there were some promising Git commits, but nothing
> happened since then. I tried to publish my man page translations for cpio, but
> got no response.
> 
> Having a look at the latest man page patch in the Rawhide package, I see:
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> .SH __WARNING__
> .PP
> The cpio utility is considered LEGACY based on POSIX specification.  Users are
> encouraged to use other archiving tools for archive creation.
> 
> If you decided to use cpio, you should almost always force cpio to use the
> ustar format in copy-out mode by the -H option (cpio -o -H ustar).  This is
> because the ustar format is well defined in POSIX specification and thus
> readable by wide range of other archiving tools (including tar e.g.).
> 
> By default, GNU cpio uses (for historical reasons) the very old binary format
> ('bin') which has significant problems nowadays, e.g. with storing big inode
> numbers (see the Red Hat bug #952313).
> 
> Note also that these days the modern 'pax' archive format should be considered
> as the default -- but this format is not implemented in GNU cpio.  You should,
> again, consider using other archivers (e.g. 'tar --format=pax').«
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> The only possible way to keep cpio alive would be to fork it as a Red Hat
> project, as long as our package management still needs it. As far as I can 
> see,
> it is not required directly by rpm and dnf, but by rpmlint, libguestfs and 
> some
> other RedHat/Fedora-related software.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Mario
> 

Well, everybody needs cpio to create initramfs/initrd images to boot from.