Marcus Brinkmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 09:46:23PM +0200, Marco Gerards wrote: > > Jeff Bailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > > Another problem right now is the translator vs. tarring up /dev stuff. > > > > What are you going to do about this? With Marco's patch floating > > > > around, wouldn't it make sense to talk to the Debian tar maintainer > > > > (Bdale) while he's around? Or are we going to take a different road? > > > > > > Different path. It turns out that the only reason they don't use > > > MAKEDEV is because it was slow. We don't have that issue so will just > > > use MAKEDEV. I lost track of the thread for Marco's tar patch. I don't > > > remember if we ever decided it was an attribute or a file type. > > > > (FYI:) It = passive translator > > > > I was trying to explain the star maintainer that passive translators > > are a filetype and not an attribute of a file. But he isn't convinced > > of this yet... > > That is because he is probably correct. Remember that you can set a > passive translator on any node, an empty file, a file with content, or > a directory, or whatever. On the other hand, it is not possible to > set a translator to a symlink (I don't think you can stack passive > translators, can you?)
I thought the contents of the file/directory were lost after setting a translator on it, but I was wrong (I misunderstood the ext2fs code, just by checking it out manually I found out you were right :)). But that doesn't really matter, my patch makes a passive translator behave like a filetype because that is the only data that is stored. Do you agree? > So, it might very well be that the right behaviour for tar would be to > tar up the underlying file and its translator setting (as an attribute > to the file). So far we only have ocnsidered empty nodes carrying > passive translators. > > > What matter more to me is having this patch (or a reworked version) in > > GNU tar. This cannot be done in a POSIX compatible way without doing a > > _LOT_ of GNU tar work. Jeff, what would be the best way to get this in > > GNU tar? (Or at least to get some comments about this?). > > For GNU tar, having a patch that just saves the translator setting > (not the underlying file) would be a good first thing to have. > However, saving the underlying file should also be consdered as an > option, because some translators might require it in the future. > POSIX compatibility is not a requirement for GNU tra today (as GNU tar > is already not POSIX compatible). I agree. When there is a new GNU tar (or the current one was modified to be POSIX compatible) I can write a new patch. I'm aware that this is only a short term solution. > What would be more interesting is translator support in Linux ext2fs > (to the extend of being able to read and write passive translator > settings), so you could unpack such a tar file under GNU/Linux on a > Hurd partition. I agree. I thought about this. It is even possible to write a utility that can do this on unmounted/read-only filesystems. (Just like there is this program that can change the filesystem owner) Thanks, Marco
