Re: [Bug-tar] Re: AMTAR brokenness

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:

> Given all the hassles that will accompany any change, perhaps we
> should give the maintainer a more gradual upgrade path.
> 
> For example, we could add an automake macro AM_TAR_FORMAT.
[...]

That's a nice idea. I'd vote for it.

> I'd put cpio last on the list, with the lowest priority.

I agree.

> Traditional
> UNIX cpio had serious bugs whenever two files had inode numbers that
> were the same modulo 2**16.  This problem persisted for many years (up
> until I stopped using cpio -- perhaps it still has the bug for all I
> know).  GNU cpio cannot yet handle large files or archives (i.e.,
> larger than 2 GiB on typical x86 hosts).

The CVS version is able to handle large files, however most
distributions still ship cpio binaries compiled without large
file support.

Regards,
Sergey