GNU tar damage for the 5000th time, was Re: [Zope] z2 startup exception

[Jamie Heilman]

Terry Hancock wrote:
> On Monday 22 September 2003 03:31 pm, Jamie Heilman wrote:
> > Waiting for all the versions of tar in the world to suddenly agree
> > on how to handle path names containing over 100 characters isn't a
> > terribly effective approach.  What would be really swift, is if
> > Zope Corp just restructured their code so there were no longer any
> > paths that exceeded said limit.
> 
> Well, since Gnu Tar is available to everyone, I think it *is* a
> worldwide open standard on how to handle long pathnames in tar
> files. Other tar programs apparently do not handle them at all.  So
> I think there's a pretty clear cut case here that those other tar
> programs are simply broken.

I didn't say anything about standards, but since you bring it up
http://www.gnu.org/manual/tar/html_node/tar_117.html#SEC112

> And anyway, how many tar programs are you aware of? The broken tar I
> know of is specifically the System 5 derived tar that comes with
> Solaris -- are there others?

Several, but its irrelevant, the problem is either worth fixing or it
isn't, and the only way to fix it to re-arrange the source.  I mean if
you're going to tell people to download a new tar you might as well
tell them to grab cvs and just check the source out directly avoiding
the whole mess.

There is a note about tar pecularites in the FAQ document inside the
tarball...  which is fine I guess, but its evidently not enough.  I
think the real problem is that the symptoms of the problem tend vary,
sometimes the breakage doesn't manifest as a checksum error, or it
scrolls off the console too fast to see or something, so people
invariably end up asking the list.  Anyway, I sort of doubt the source
will change, but it would avoid the problem, and it would make it
easier on the newbies.  Somebody told me this community was into that.
 
-- 
Jamie Heilman                     http://audible.transient.net/~jamie/
"You came all this way, without saying squat, and now you're trying
 to tell me a '56 Chevy can beat a '47 Buick in a dead quarter mile?
 I liked you better when you weren't saying squat kid." -Buddy