Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 8 Jul 2002 00:10:13 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>
To:        mark@thuvia.demon.co.uk
Cc:        arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Package system flaws?
Message-ID:  <200207080410.g684ADZt028359@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <200207080334.g683YQsg042547@dotar.thuvia.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In article <200207080334.g683YQsg042547@dotar.thuvia.org> you write:

>It made me sit up and think, but you almost certainly have to extend pax(1)
>to realise the extensions (correct me if I'm wrong), and I rather like a
>format I can script with existing utilities.

Not at all.  You certainly *could* do it that way, but whether it's
worth it to do so depends greatly on what it is that you want to do
(that you have declined to share) with the archives other than
installing them.  Using the pax headers to store package
metainformation is no more difficult to deal with than using the
comment field in a ZIP archive's directory to do the same thing.  If
you're just examining the package, you can use a purpose-built tool to
get the metainformation out, and if you don't need that, you don't
need the tool either.

The pax specification provides that unrecognized extension headers are
to be ignored.

-GAWollman

-- 
Garrett A. Wollman   | [G]enes make enzymes, and enzymes control the rates of
wollman@lcs.mit.edu  | chemical processes.  Genes do not make ``novelty-
Opinions not those of| seeking'' or any other complex and overt behavior.
MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA|         - Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002)

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200207080410.g684ADZt028359>