Alexandre Duret-Lutz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > How about this scheme:
In the light of later discussion, how about this scheme instead? Use the first of the following commands that works: tar --format=ustar tar pax -x ustar I wouldn't bother with POSIXLY_CORRECT=1 or "tar -o", as they don't really help much these days. > On second though, shouldn't we try to use pax first? tar is no > longer a POSIX requirement, right? The "tar" command has never been a POSIX requirement. However, "pax" has never caught on, for various reasons, and it hasn't been road-tested as much as "tar" has. It makes sense to use "pax" if "tar" is not available, but I wouldn't make "pax" my first choice. > Also do we really need to try `-o'? I vaguely recall that RMS used to suggest -o in the GNU coding standards, for compatibility with v7 'tar', but that requirement is no longer necessary (it's not in the standards now, anyway). > Besides GNU tar, is there some tar implementation that does not > default to the ustar format? Many tar implementations have trouble with path names longer than 99 bytes. This includes the current GNU tar official latest non-alpha release (which is buggy in this area). It would be reasonable to add an automake option that checks for longer-than-99-byte file names, for people who are worried about such things. But I don't think it needs to be high priority.