Re: Perfomance problem backupscript (more details and tests)

On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 06:17, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > > > The point of that test was to show that GNU tar does handle
> > > > renamed directories correctly with --listed-incremental.
> > > 
> > > It definitely does _not_.
> > > 
> > > Try to get the most recent release (1.15.1) compile it by your own
> > > and follow the instructions I did send out last week.
> >
> > My test script works the same and duplicates the contents of the
> > renamed directory with 1.15.1.  I can't use your instructions because
> 
> Did you repeat the test with a _real_  1.15.1?

Yes, simple directory renaming is handled by all versions. There
are other bugs, and perhaps a design flaw that can't be fixed
in a backwards compatible way:  the GNUdump format archive that
is created contains only the filenames present in a directory
and no indication of its type.  That means that a directory
replaced by a file of the same name is not automatically
removed in the directory pass (because the name existed
at incremental time)  and it also is not overwritten in the file restore
step (it needs the equivalent of star's -force-remove,
-remove-first, and -remove-recursive options to work around
this).  Fortunately the data is still in the archive and
can be restored if the offending directory is moved so it
is less problematic than star's somewhat equivalent problem
if you migrate the contents of a directory to a new filesystem
mounted on that directory between runs. 


> If the version you use has some of the named bugs fixed, then the followoing
> applies to you:
> 
> -	You are using a badly maitained distro as it seems that the maintainer
> 	do not care about star the same way as they do for GNU tar.

The maintainers do updates as possible for bugs that users report,
so this really means that it is the users that don't care about
star.  Since star has command line syntax that is incompatible
with any existing backup manager and a little-understood
mechanism for incrementals, it is not surprising that it is
used less.  If you'd like the fedora maintainers to update star
please file a bugzilla report on the problem that needs to
be fixed.  Behavior-changing updates are left for the next
OS version release.

> -	You don't use a GNU tar-1.15.1 but an internal developer version
> 	that does not have been published as an official version that
> 	compiles on all platforms. Note that you cannot e.g. compile the
> 	CVS content from the GNU tar maintainers on Solaris as the creation
> 	of a useful GNU tar source archive depends on non-standard programs.

I don't expect any application to work on all platforms until the
distribution maintainers have adapted and tested it.  The patches
may find their way into the base distribution eventually but
I gave up on expecting developer releases to 'just work'
everywhere long ago.  

> > > Please be fair and compare the latest GNU tar version with the latest
> > > star version.
> >
> > A fair comparison requires an equally widely tested version of star.
> 
> I am sorry, but I will not reduce the quality of star in order to meet your 
> wishes.....

How do you consider that adapting to plaforms and fixing user
reported bugs reduces quality?

> -	It usually takes 10 years for the GNU tar maintainers to fix them.

Which is fortunately offset by the fact that it has been used
heavily for more than 10 years...

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    [email protected]