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To: Tim Kientzle <tim@kientzle.com>
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	<86wr2uwdgf.fsf@ds4.des.no>
	<C31B93F4-674C-4183-9F3F-5F7C48980204@kientzle.com>
Comments: In-reply-to: Tim Kientzle <tim@kientzle.com>
	message dated "Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:18:05 -0700."
From: "Simon J. Gerraty" <sjg@juniper.net>
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Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 09:16:05 -0700
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Cc: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@des.no>,
	freebsd-arch@freebsd.org, sjg@juniper.net
Subject: Re: Allow user install
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On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:18:05 -0700, Tim Kientzle writes:
>Better idea:  have the build write a textual description of the
>tar entries.  That description can then be fed to tar to build
>the actual tarball.

Yes, that's what we do - manifest files that tar and other tools use to
produce the install images.

>The description format that tar already supports is a variant
>mtree format borrowed from NetBSD.  Each line specifies
>the tar entry fields (filename, owner, permissions, etc) and
>the filename where the file contents are stored.

Yes, we've added that support to makefs - I believe it is already in
-current.  There's still quite a bit to do.