Re: Extending ar format to support large member sizes

On 21.08.2025 04:50, Guillem Jover wrote:
> As you probably know the deb 2.x packaging format [D] is based on an
> ar container, with tar members for its format definition, control
> metadata and filesystem data payloads (among others).
> 
> A problem that has been known for a while now [S], is that the ar format
> has a file size limit, which means the deb format is thus limited to
> filesystem payloads (usually compressed) of at most around 9536.74 MiB.
> 
> This is starting to become an issue, and it's something that has been
> bothering me for a bit, because support for a new deb format should be
> ready way before we need it, as older tools should ideally be able to
> handle it. And there are multiple tools involved that will need to be
> updated [T].

Hasn't there been an extension to cover that for many years, using "!<arch64>\n"
as file signature? I do not know, however, for well formalized that extension is,
which solely differs from traditional archives by having a 20-byte size field (in
place of the 10-byte one).

Jan