On Jul 7, 2011, at 4:12 AM, Florian Festi wrote: > As you may know RPM is using the cpio format to store the files contents > within the RPM packages. During the last couple of years a number of issues > have popped up that root in the limitation to 32 bits in the integer data > fields of the cpio format.
Which specific fields? I've heard of a few attempts to extend the cpio format over the years, but none have really gained any traction. I don't envy your position: any extension to the cpio format will necessarily be non-standard, and GNU cpio is far from the only implementation of cpio in the world. ;-) If you do have to switch formats, I would suggest taking a careful look at the "pax" extended tar format. It has it's problems, but it is at least well-standardized and pretty widely supported already. It's also quite extensible and has essentially no limits on numeric range. Cheers, Tim Kientzle
