On 28/06/07, Joerg Schilling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"Shawn Walker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 27/06/07, Joerg Schilling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > In the special case of Sun's tar implementation, the biggest problem is that
> > the documentation is incomplete and that there are many completely
undocumented
> > features. As I mentioned already, it would help if we agree on that the
current
> > /usr/bin/tar may be replaced by star without the need to implement features
> > that are either not documented (in public) at all or that have no
documentation
> > for the related archive format on June 25th 2007.
>
> I don't see that happening Joerg. As several engineers have already
> tried to tell you, Sun is in a position where they are required to
> continue to support certain functionality.
This is a problem that needs to be solved instead of continuing with the
problem. Note that Solaris did never have this code in sun tar. For Solaris
this code is _new_ code that needs to follow the rules of today.
The problem cannot be solved in the way that you want to solve it.
Dropping support for something you don't like isn't a solution; it is
abandonment.
The problem is not a problem of Solaris users but a problem of former
"Trusted Solaris" users.
No, it is a problem for Solaris users, especially since many parts of
"Trusted Solaris" are now a part of Solaris. You do realise that,
correct?
This is why I did make the proposal to rename the current binary to
/usr/bin/otar. This would allow to have follow the rules of today while
at the same time giving support for former "Trusted Solaris" users to read
their archives.
That's not a very good experience for the user. Surely there must be
some way for star to recognise "Trusted Solaris" archives, and do the
right thing -- even if that means turning around and calling otar.
Even if you can't support creating these special archives, surely you
can support reading them given enough information.
--
Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it. " --Donald Knuth
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