From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jul 17 17:38:00 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 61C8E16A4CE; Sat, 17 Jul 2004 17:38:00 +0000 (GMT) Received: from kientzle.com (h-66-166-149-50.snvacaid.covad.net [66.166.149.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0365243D5C; Sat, 17 Jul 2004 17:38:00 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kientzle@freebsd.org) Received: from freebsd.org (p54.kientzle.com [66.166.149.54]) by kientzle.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i6HHbx90012582; Sat, 17 Jul 2004 10:37:59 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from kientzle@freebsd.org) Message-ID: <40F963D8.6010201@freebsd.org> Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 10:37:28 -0700 From: Tim Kientzle User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20031006 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: current@freebsd.org, ports@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: NEW TAR X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 17:38:00 -0000 By default, /usr/bin/tar is now a symlink pointing to /usr/bin/bsdtar. How will this affect you? Most people should not notice the change. bsdtar accepts the most popular gtar command-line options, reads gtar files, and generally does what most people expect from a modern tar implementation. However, bsdtar is not a clone of gtar. If you rely on specific gtar features, then you should be using gtar. What are the differences? * Command line: bsdtar implements the -l and -o options according to the Single Unix Standard, gtar's -l and -o options directly contradict SUS. bsdtar warns about most mis-uses of these options, but there is a potential for silent changes to the behavior of existing scripts. * File format: bsdtar can read gtar files, including long file names, long link names, and sparse files. bsdtar can also read many other formats that gtar does not support. bsdtar writes POSIX-standard ustar archives by default. gtar can read ustar archives with no problem. bsdtar uses POSIX "pax extended attributes" for long file names, long link names, ACLs, file flags, and other additional information. gtar does not understand pax extended attributes and will warn about them. (Joerg Schilling's "star" does support pax extended attributes as do POSIX-compliant pax implementations on many commercial Unix platforms.) * Error reporting: bsdtar is more critical than gtar about certain kinds of errors. In particular, it will exit with an error if you provide nonsensical command-line options or if you attempt to read an unrecognized archive. gtar does not warn about many such problems. * Ease of use: When reading archives, bsdtar automatically determines compression and file format. The -j, -y, -z, and -Z options are ignored when reading archives. bsdtar can "interpolate" entries from existing archives when creating new archives (see the "@archive" extension). * Advanced tape drive support: gtar has a variety of options for managing tape drives, including rmt support. bsdtar currently lacks these features. * Portability: gtar is portable to many different Unix and non-Unix systems. bsdtar supports standard file formats that are widely supported by other implementations. There are efforts to port bsdtar to other platforms. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to address them to me at: kientzle@freebsd.org Tim Kientzle