> BVK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > I have seen many people cursing GNU tar as not > being compatible > > with other tars. Can anyone tell me how GNU tar is > incompatible with > > other tars? Any pointers please? > > > > All i found was other tars do not support long > pathnames (more than > > 100 characters). Are there any more differences? > > There is a standard on how to archive path names > longer than 100 chars. > This POSIX standard is from 1988 and ignored by GNU > tar by default. > As a result, most other tar implementations are > unable to extract GNU tar > archives in case they contain path names longer than > 100 chars. > > Jörg
If their documentation is accurate, the current version can read and write POSIX tar archives, it just doesn't create them by default (requires --format=posix option to do so). While they may have some reason for that, I have trouble imagining what it might be. I can understand backwards compatibility, but for that, it should be enough that it _can_ automatically read or (possibly with an option) write either format, and not matter so much which it does by default, in which case the default for writing really ought to be the standards compliant format. And from the millions of times you've mentioned the shortcomings of GNU tar (and are showing amazing restraint on this occasion!), I suspect you've already had that argument with them... This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
