Re: Future possibility to publish _AM_PROG_TAR for general use?

Have you considered that a system may have multiple viable tar programs and
that a user may prefer to use a different one than Automake chooses to use?
Automake's criteria is different than a normal users and the program
selected might not even be include 'tar' as part of its name.

Bob

On Sun, Nov 23, 2025, 12:54=E2=80=AFAM mpsuzuki <[email protected]=
> wrote:

> Dear experts,
>
> I'm interested in whether publishing _AM_PROG_TAR in tar.m4 for general
> use is a considerable idea, or bad idea.
> In my understanding, _AM_PROG_TAR is designed to help "make dist" of
> Automake target, and it is not for general use.
> There are some source packages whose top-level makefile is not managed by
> autoconf/automake and write their own "make dist" recipes.
> One example is FreeType. Currently it is hardcoding "tar --format=3Dustar
> -chf -", like:
>
>
> https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/freetype/freetype/-/blob/master/builds/top=
level.mk?ref_type=3Dheads
>
> I hope its portability can be improved by something like _AM_PROG_TAR.
> It is not so difficult to reimplenetation of _AM_PROG_TAR in each softwar=
e
> project,
> but if automake can consider publishising _AM_PROG_TAR, the maintenance
> would be easier.
>
> Regards,
> mpsuzuki
>
>
>
>