Re: bsdcpio and bsdtar installed by default

[Alistair Crooks <agc%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 01:37:05PM +0200, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 05:53:02PM -0400, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 10:25:37PM +0200, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > > I would like to go on and install bsdcpio and bsdtar by default.
> > > This does not mean that /bin/tar will change to bsdtar for now, just
> > > that both are present.
> > 
> > I strongly object to re-bloating the system with two versions of tar.
> 
> The "bloat" you call it is 110KB on AMD64, not counting the shared
> library that is needed for other purposes.

I'm still not clear on why we need a libarchive-based tar and cpio -
the number of POSIX-based archives out there is fairly small, I would
judge; the upheaval within pkgsrc has been huge and I suspect the same
will be coming to src when if this is done (although this may be an
artefact of the way the changes to pkg_install have been handled), and
I don't know why pax couldn't have been modified to handle this new
archive format.

Added to this, from the number of changes and bugfixes made to
libarchive just recently, I'd judge that it's still not ready, and
that bugs are being found and fixed on a regular basis.  Given that, I
have to question the urgency of this addition, in addition to its
requirement.

Despite all the above, I could be persuaded that it could be in our
best interests to do this - so can you explain in a few short
paragraphs all the benefits we'll gain by doing this, please, and the
reason for the haste?

Thanks,
Alistair