On Tue, 24 Nov 2009, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
Hello Alan, Jim,* Jim Meyering wrote on Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 04:32:57PM CET: Automake is following the GNU Coding Standards recommendation here, which lists another reason ((standards.info)Releases): Make sure that the directory into which the distribution unpacks (as well as any subdirectories) are all world-writable (octal mode 777). This is so that old versions of `tar' which preserve the ownership and permissions of the files from the tar archive will be able to extract all the files even if the user is unprivileged.
Does anyone have a cite for what version, how old? (sounds like mid 1980's, actually). -- Thomas E. Dickey http://invisible-island.net ftp://invisible-island.net
