Re: mtree(8) vs mtree(5)

[Luke Mewburn <luke%mewburn.net@localhost>]

On 23-06-01 15:44, Valery Ushakov wrote:
  | We have mtree(8) man page for our mtree that documents the format of
  | the mtree spec.  We also have an mtree(5) page that documents the
  | format of the mtree spec, but that pages comes from libarchive.  This
  | is kinda confusing.

I agree!


  | What is the relationship between the two? (libarchive borrowed bsd
  | code? are they kept in sync?)  Can we drop the format description from
  | mtree(8) and rely on mtree(5) from libarchive?  Should we drop the
  | format description from mtree(8), move it to *our own* mtree(5) and
  | don't install mtree(5) from libarchive?  (We can document any
  | differences in our mtree(5) b/c we know/control both our own
  | implementation and also which version of libarchive we ship).

It doesn't look like our mtree(8) uses libarchive.
Does anything in-tree use libarchive's mtree implementation?

In general, I'm all for documenting stuff correctly, and reducing
duplication. I don't have a strong opinion on whether we keep our
mtree(8) file format documentation within mtree(8) or move to our own
mtree(5). If we wrote our own mtree(5) (and didn't install libarchive
mtree(5), or installed libarchive mtree(5) with a different name?) we
should put some notes how it differs (if at all) from libarchive
mtree95).caveats into it.

The libarchive mtree(5) doesn't have some of the detailed history
that we have in our mtree(8). I'm slightly attached to the latter's


Luke.