Re: [dev] [sbase][tar] GNU tar support

From: Thomas Oltmann <thomas.oltmann.hhg_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2020 18:32:36 +0100

> if gnu tar proprietary?

No. I think Laslo meant 'proprietary' as in 'ad hoc' or 'incompatible'
(with standard implementations).

> there's probably no way to implement those GNU-extensions in a good and
> suckless way. The FSF has the bad habit for their
> standard-implementations that they tend to add everything including the
> kitchen sink which might as well be easily handled by other standard
> tools (think of "cat -v" for example).

While I generally agree with Laslo, I'm in favor of supporting *a
select few* of GNU tar's extensions.
Granted, most of them are pretty niche (insane), like support for
files that span over multiple volumes.
But there's at least one useful extension: Long file name support.
That extension is also what Cág's error message "unsupported
tar-filetype L" is about.
I'm pretty confident that, with this extension alone, you would be
able to at least extract most GNU tar archives.

I could try writing a patch for this, if people are interested.

Cheers,
     Thomas
Received on Wed Nov 25 2020 - 18:32:36 CET