Re: Future possibility to publish _AM_PROG_TAR for general use?

Dear Zack, Karl,

Thank you for comment. Indeed, if the make variable @TAR@ is
substituted by the long command like
"tar --format=ustar chf - $(tardir)",
it would be much different for what the users expect for its name.
A name with clear distinction is essential, if the macro is
exposed to public.

Regards,
mpsuzuki

On 2025/11/24 6:45, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 23, 2025, at 4:31 PM, Karl Berry wrote:
>> I'm interested in whether publishing _AM_PROG_TAR in tar.m4
>>
>> Well, I agree with Bob that _AM_PROG_TAR is rather idiosyncratic, what
>> with defining commands that output the tar file to stdout. But
>> nevertheless, I take your point that copying all the checks is rather
>> annoying. Users can set the TAR envvar (and/or AMTAR, maybe) to get a
>> different program, I believe.
> 
> I wouldn't be opposed to Autoconf shipping an AC_PROG_TAR, but it would
> need to confine itself to like "find a tar program that can generate
> POSIX-compliant tar archives and set @TAR@ to its name + any options
> required to get the compliant output format", leaving operation mode,
> source, destination and whatnot to the user.
> 
> zw