Re: [Bug-tar] GNU Tar and OS X resource forks

[Tony]

On Mar 7, 2010, at 3:15 PM, Chuck Swiger wrote:

> Hi--
> 
> On Mar 7, 2010, at 7:11 AM, Tony wrote:
>> With OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), Apple switched (again) to bsdtar.  OS X 10.5 
>> included an Apple-Modified GNU Tar 1.15.1 that was resource fork aware.  I 
>> would like to use GNU Tar 1.22 and wanted to know if 1.22 was OS X resource 
>> fork aware, or if a patch exists that can make it so.
> 
> 10.6 comes with both bsdtar 2.6.2 and GNU tar 1.17 (which was the last 
> version under GPLv2); change the /usr/bin/tar symlink to point to gnutar 
> instead if you prefer.
> 
> However, both support resource forks via the same "._FILE" mechanism (or 
> FILE/rsrc/NamedFork) implemented at the filesystem level.  Quick testing 
> suggests that both bsdtar and gnutar both create archives and can extract 
> files with resource forks properly, and they also do fine extracting an 
> archive created with the other flavor of tar.  I'm unsure of what you hope to 
> gain, but you should be able to build and use gnutar 1.22 instead if you 
> like....
> 
> Regards,
> -- 
> -Chuck
> 

Thanks Chuck,

I didn't realize that OS X had GNU tar 1.17 (I had copied 1.15.1 to my 
usr/local/bin directory).   My reason for using GNU Tar instead of bsdtar is 
GNU Tar's support for Multi-Volume Archives (i.e. to back-up iPhoto to DVD's).  
I'll use GNU tar 1.17 that's included with OS X 10.6

Tony