Re: libpax?

>From [email protected] Mon Jun 24 01:11:46 2002
>Joerg Schilling <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I don't understand why you like to be compatible to GNU tar?

>As a user, I would expect that GNU tar and GNU tarfs are compatible.  As
>a devloper, I would feel responsible for providing this compatility.  I

Being forced to be compatible to a proprietary TAR archive variant
looks like a M$ issue :-(

>would like to avoid making the GNU operating system be incompatible
>with itself.  But maybe there are issues which I am not aware of; for
>example, I don't know how compatible GNU tar is (and will be) to other
>versions of itself.

Well, if you remove GNU tar and install star instead you would not have this
problem ;-)

>That is to say, my personal interest is to make tarfs be able to handle
>as many tar archives as possible in ways that please the users.  I think
>this is a goal worth aiming at and is more important than pure standards
>compliance.

In former times, Application developers did know about the compatibility
problems with GNU tar and did create source packages using AT&T TAR-1978
compliant archives instead. SPreading GNU tar archives instead of using
standard compliant archives is a problem of the last two years.

>But of course, what eventually will happen depends on the paxutils
>developers and the people implementing tarfs.  I wanted to raise the
>issue here to get the opinion of the paxutils people.

I did inform several TAR developers about the problems with their
programs last week. Let us see if they make their programs standard compliant
now that there is a program to check for compliance and people are able to
work and test repeatedly until all issued have been addressed.

Jörg

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