[task #15699] Unified format for software tarballs

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Follow-up Comment #12, task #15699 (project reproduce):

> in comment #1, you mentioned that ustar is the best tar format for
> futureproof-ness. But as far as I understood so far, tarlz works
> with the pax format. Won't that be an issue for longevity?

Pax is an extension on top of ustar. (Ustar is a subset of pax). What tarlz
does is to produce ustar archives by default (just like 'tar -Hustar'), but
tarlz adds one extended pax header for each member that requires it (for
example because the file name is too long for ustar). In the case of boost,
tarlz adds 46 extended pax headers in a total of 76801 members. AFAIK, this is
the most efficient and future proof that can be done just now.

You can use tarlz for all archives, and it will automatically add pax headers
only to those archives requiring them.

For more info see the "pax Interchange Format" section at
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/pax.html
"The physical layout of the archive shall be identical to the ustar format".


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