Re: [Bug-tar] tar "v7" format archives are created with directory entries

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Hi Mark,

> Basically, when you specify --format=v7, GNU tar creates archives with
> entries for directories, which is incorrect. They should be omitted from
> v7-format archives.

Actually, that was the behavior of very early versions of GNU tar.
It was changed around February, 1997, so that tar began accepting
directories when in "old archive" mode. This change was followed
by the inclusion of the old.sh test case[1] (presently old.at), which
explicitly tests that directories be accepted in "old archive" mode.

I don't know what was the rationale for that change, but I suppose that
it had something to do with the fact that Makefiles produced by Automake
use the -o option to create what was called "v7 archives". Perhaps
Paul can give some more insight.

It is rather easy to fix, but care should be taken not to break the
Automake functionality. I will see what can be done.

Regards,
Sergey

[1] 
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/tar.git/commit/?id=4cc7679c2bb76136713d2a2c1527e6ece0cf2c8e