Simon Josefsson wrote:
> 1) Some of the suggested flags probably requires a newer GNU tar. ...
> running 'make distcheck' on old
> systems is useful for ironing out platform-dependent problems.
I always run
- 'make distcheck' only on my development machine,
- 'make check' on various platforms.
What is the kind of bugs I could detect by running 'make distcheck'
on Alpine Linux or Android?
> 2) Some choices may be opinionated, but I'm not sure which ones. Maybe
> PAX archives as in --format=posix? I recall seeing some people
> recommend --format=ustar for greater compatibility
I use --format=ustar because I want the oldest (= most compatible) format
that fits my needs.
- The default is --format=v7 (with Automake).
- But with it I got errors such as
tar:
gettext-0.19.8.1.74-72e49-dirty/gettext-tools/gnulib-tests/test-term-ostream-xterm-linux-mandriva.out:
file name is too long (max 99); not dumped
tar:
gettext-0.19.8.1.74-72e49-dirty/gettext-runtime/intl-csharp/doc/GNU_Gettext_GettextResourceManager.html:
file name is too long (max 99); not dumped
Looking at [1], --format=posix brings only features that most GNU package
tarballs will never need.
> + touch -m -d @"$$(git log -1 --format=%ct)" $(srcdir)/NEWS; \
Looks fine to me. --format=%ct prints the CommitDate, as seconds since the
Epoch.
Bruno
[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Formats.html
