Re: bsdcpio and bsdtar installed by default

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost>]

On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 01:05:49PM +0100, Alistair Crooks wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 01:55:02PM +0200, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 11:13:21AM +0200, Martin Husemann wrote:
> > > I don't understand the whole idea (besides I do not understand the 
> > > advantages
> > > of the new stuff well enough) - if we replace tar/pax/cpio with the new
> > > stuff when it's ready, it will get good testing in -current after we 
> > > branch
> > > for 5.0 - but if it is installed under some obscure different name, it 
> > > will
> > > not be tested at all, so why import it?
> > 
> > One reason is that it makes it possible to use the mono package on
> > NetBSD 5.0 and supposedly other similiar packages. pax-as-tar can't deal
> > with the POSIX interchange format pkg_create creates and it can't even
> > create such archives correctly.
> 
> Exactly why do we need to create such archives?

What other format exists to correctly represent long symlinks? GNU tar
format is not an answer as GNU tar itself is creating POSIX interchange
archives here. Why do we want to create such archives? Because tar is
also a backup program.

> > That is a very practical reason to do
> > it before the branch, especially given that the pkg_install-renovation
> > branch won't be part of NetBSD 5.0, which fixes the problem by avoiding
> > external tar completely.
> 
> This has come around too late in the release cycle for 5.0 for it to
> be considered for inclusion in 5.0.

Fine, in that case I can mark the PR as "won't fix" and don't bother
with another NetBSD release.

Joerg