Your message dated Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:37:44 -0600 with message-id <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> has caused the Debian Bug report #448292, regarding bsdtar: Obsolete information in man page to be marked as having been forwarded to the upstream software author(s) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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--- Begin Message ---Hi Tim, I got a bug report in Debian regarding the -l option to bsdtar. I have checked with the latest 2.4.11 version of bsdtar and see this in the docs for the -l option: -l If POSIXLY_CORRECT is specified in the environment, this is a synonym for the --check-links option. Otherwise, an error will be displayed. Users who desire behavior compatible with GNU tar should use the --one-file-system option instead. Our current version of GNU tar shows this as its description for -l: -l, --check-links print a message if not all links are dumped Current GNU tar does not appear to have a short name for --one-file-system. I suspect it would be safe for bsdtar to take -l to be the same as --check-links in all cases these days. If not, it should probably be noted that current GNU tar assumes -l means --check-links as well. Thanks again for libarchive and bsd{tar,cpio}. -- John--- Begin Message ---Package: bsdtar Version: 1.2.53-2 Severity: minor There are 2 chunks of obsolete information in the bsdtar man page: 1) It states with the -l option: "Users who desire behavior compatible with GNU tar should use the --one-file-system option instead." The current GNU tar manpage however states with the same option: "-l, --check-links print a message if not all links are dumped" Obviously the meaning of the -l option in GNU tar has changed to match the POSIX behaviour. This fact is also stated in an entry in the GNU tar changelog dated 2006-05-24. 2) The BUGS section also refers to the -l option: "POSIX and GNU violently disagree about the meaning of the -l option. Because of the potential for disaster if someone expects one behavior and gets the other, the -l option is deliberately broken in this implementa- tion." The documentation should be updated to match the current facts and probably the -l option could be changed to always yield the POSIX behaviour now that the other tar's agree upon its meaning. -- System Information: Debian Release: 4.0 APT prefers stable APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i586) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-4-486 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Versions of packages bsdtar depends on: ii libarchive1 1.2.53-2 Single library to read/write tar, ii libbz2-1.0 1.0.3-6 high-quality block-sorting file co ii libc6 2.6.1-1+b1 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii zlib1g 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-5 compression library - runtime bsdtar recommends no packages. -- no debconf information
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