From: Eric Kadison (EKadison@Broadstor.com)
Date: 05/31/02-02:40:59 PM Z
Message-ID: <B28426739978D511BBB80002A537E87505300B@email> From: Eric Kadison <EKadison@Broadstor.com> Subject: RE: tar for NFS V4 Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 12:40:59 -0700 gww wrote: > Harder still is to cook up an archive extension > method that doesn't make unextended tar's cough > up fur balls. GNU tar has a few tricks (long file > names, sparse files, etc). But you still get fur > balls when you extract with an old tar. And it > looks like it won't be long before today's GNU > is the unextended, fur ball coughing tar. And then > there are present day extensions like Solaris 9. > Such are future legacy at least. I suppose a > certain amount of divergence before convergence > is to be expected. Here, Here!! Well Said!?? Backward compatibility is a big problem. GNU tar is a standard for distribution beyond any one OS. NFS V4 and NDMP both need more capability that, implemented by each of us in our own semi-proprietary way, cause GNU tar to cough up. Before long, someone needs to perform an update to GNU tar or it will become obsolete. It might be too late to create an extension mechanism that won't cause classical GNU tar to fail. But it would not be difficult to create a new version of GNU tar that would recognize and ignore extensions it did not support. This would be a much simpler upgrade for the existing customer base. Eric
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