Re: [dev] [sbase] [patch] Completely ignore character and block devices in tar(1)

From: sin <sin_AT_2f30.org>
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:39:13 +0000

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 03:48:33PM +0000, Nick wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 03:35:25PM +0000, sin wrote:
> > I think this is probably the best course of action
> > at this point.
> > ...
> > Support for character and block devices is optional in POSIX.
> > We cannot guarantee that this will work correctly and it is not
> > portable, so just drop support for it in tar(1).
>
> I'm not sure I agree. We shouldn't be tethered to POSIX if it means
> losing useful functionality for no practical reason. Are there any
> systems out there that don't have support for character and block
> devices? Haiku isn't a compelling argument to me. In any case, I
> prefer the #ifdef solution. #ifdefs are dangerous, but I see nothing
> wrong with how you used them here.

BTW, I will be preparing a README for sbase and I'd like to briefly
mention on which OS'es it has been tested.

I've tried a bunch of different compilers (tcc, pcc, gcc, clang, nwcc) on
various combinations of OS'es and architectures (*BSD, Solaris, Linux, Haiku).
On Haiku, everything works except nice(1) and renice(1) - they don't have
getpriority()/setpriority() (that's their fault.)

If anyone has access to some special oldschool UNIX systems, I'd like
to see if sbase compiles and works on those.

cheers,
sin
Received on Thu Jan 30 2014 - 17:39:13 CET