>> If our stock tar is too bloated for the install disks (it *is* a GNU
>> program;

> I believe our stock tar is now a front-end for pax.

Um.  I fetched the then-most-recent-available i386 snapshot and in it,
/usr/bin/tar claims (when run with --version) to be GNU tar.

> Besides, even GNU tar has the temp-space requirement.

> Your tar might also; do you handle "xp" correctly for directories
> that are read-only?

I most certainly don't use space in /tmp (nor anywhere else
filesystem-visible), I know that much.  I *did* write the thing, after
all!  As for whether I handle them "correctly"...well, define
"correctly" and I can tell you.  Or read on. :)

When extracting, my tar creates directories mode 700 (or maybe
something based on the umask and the mode in the archive, I forget),
owned by the uid/gid running tar.  If it's ever going to reset the mode
and owner, it does so when it sees an archive entry that is not
underneath the directory in question.

Thus, it never has to remember modes for more than the chain of
directories leading to the currently-being-extracted object.  The
downside, of course, is that it breaks if the archive reads something
like

dir/
dir/file
otherdir/something
dir/anotherfile

where the entry for dir is such that the directory ends up unwriteable
by the uid/gid the extract is running as.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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