Re: [Bug-cpio] multiple tapes

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Alain Williams <address@hidden> wrote:

> why not take the opportunity to fix some of the other 'issues' with
> the cpio format - things that would help greatly at making it a true
> file system backup program; eg try to backup extended attributes,
> ACLs, ...

For as long as these can be fixed... Cpio header is standartized and
inviting our own "extensions" will make GNU cpio incompatible with both 
the standard and other implementations, which is what I want to
avoid.  As for storing any additional data, like ACLs, usernames/groups
files access time etc, I believe that cpio header is not the right place
for this. This problem has already been solved by specification of PAX
interchange formats in POSIX standard. By the way GNU tar already fully
supports it.

> * There needs to be a distinction between the cpio header that is in
> memory

You are absolutely right and that is what I want to avoid. Unfortunately
fixing this is not far from rewriting cpio from scratch.

Regards,
Sergey