Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 12:05:04 -0800 From: Jordan K Hubbard <jkh@queasyweasel.com> To: kientzle@acm.org Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSD tar (was Re: Making pkg_XXX tools smarter about file types...) Message-ID: <E587D7D9-62EA-11D7-87B7-000393BB9222@queasyweasel.com> In-Reply-To: <3E8749EA.2030801@acm.org>
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Given ample personal experience with this issue, all I can say is that actions speak a lot louder than words where it's concerned. :-) I don't mean this in the usual and offensive "put up or shut up" sense either, believe it or not. It's just that I've seen literally years worth of discussion on this topic and all the threads generally wind up in exactly the same place: Everyone agrees that the format should support good compression, random access to contents (or at least a good and fast way of skipping over unwanted items), a library as well as command-line API for manipulation, rich and extensible metadata for file attributes/signatures/checksums/comments/etc etc, the usual laundry list. Then everyone starts pulling up various package file formats from the 70's and 80's (which is about when all of the current ones were designed) and arguing the pros and cons of each, none of which were exactly designed with the current range of file attributes and computing capabilities in mind so this leads to lots of "the foo format sucks!" kinds of comments. Eventually everyone gets tired and leaves the discussion for another few months/years. That is why the deadlock will only be broken by someone coming forward with a new file format AND implementation (library and command line API) on a plate, pointing to all of its obvious advantages and suitability for current needs and then seeking to evangelize that rather than getting trapped in the endless cycle of tar/zip/rar/zoo/arc/blah debates. - Jordan On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 11:47 AM, Tim Kientzle wrote: > I've given up trying to argue for a > well-designed package file format. > tar works well enough, I suppose. > (Better than the oft-suggested > 'zip' format. Ugh.) >
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