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Date:      Tue, 21 Nov 2000 18:23:35 +0000 (UTC)
From:      seti@mips.inka.de (SETI@home)
To:        freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Jordan Hubbard on Darwin
Message-ID:  <8veej7$23uv$1@kemoauc.mips.inka.de>
References:  <4.3.2.7.2.20001118142924.00cb6850@localhost> <20001121025846.D54653@hand.dotat.at>

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Tony Finch <dot@dotat.at> wrote:

> >>Let's hear it for GNU tar, gzip, cpio and pax being standard components!
> Isn't pax a BSD program?

Yes.  And in fact, 4.4BSD pax also served as tar and cpio.  They're
all links to the same program that modifies its command line syntax
depending on how it's called.

FreeBSD and NetBSD have elected to go with GNU tar and cpio.  I
suspect that this decision predates the release of 4.4BSD Light
and the availability of 4.4BSD pax.  OpenBSD follows the 4.4BSD
lead, and has incorporate some fixes/improvements into pax.

pax as tar doesn't support all of GNU tar's bloa^Wfeatures, though,
nor GNU tar's archive format extensions.  Install the sysutils/gtar
port, read the "Controlling the Archive Format" section of the info
file, and start crying about the mess GNU tar is.

Oh, and to complete this sorry topic, our tar has diverged
significantly from the GNU release over time, so that a merge/update
is problematical.

Unfortunately, GNU tar has the singular feature (among tars) of
supporting incrementals.  So if you're caught in a situation where
you can't use dump, because you don't want to backup the complete
filesystem, nor star, because you need incrementals, gtar is your
only choice.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de



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