Hi Dimitrios and all, Back on this bug from 2015 and earlier (yikes, sorry): https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=19615
TAR_OPTIONS = --owner=0 --group=0 I expected that something like this would be the default though. I agree it would be desirable, in theory. But we can't make it the default because it's not portable. It would also be a big change from existing practice. I think adding it in projects' Makefile.am is as good as it gets. Certainly much simpler than trying to determine whether tar supports --owner/--group at "make dist" time, and then providing options as to whether to use them or not. Or which options to use. Etc. Thus, instead of making any change to the code (sorry again), I merely added a note to the manual about it. pavel> The fix was promised back in year 2008. I hope we'll see it. If one of the past or current Automake maintainers has code to deal with this, I hope they'll say. http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.automake.bugs/4340 404. I didn't try to guess which bug-automake message that might refer to. bogdan> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=60419 ... a patch that allows Automake users to provide their own command-line options that will be passed to the 'tar' utility when ... - [am__tar='$${TAR-tar} chof - "$$tardir"' am__untar='$${TAR-tar} xf -'], + [am__tar='$${TAR-tar} c $${TAR_OPTIONS} -hof - "$$tardir"' am__untar='$${TAR-tar} x $${UNTAR_OPTIONS} -f -'], Unfortunately this sort of change is not portable. tar option parsing is a strange and wonderful area. Non-dash options ("c") can't be mixed with dash options (-hof). Conceivably we could switch to all dash options (... -chof - $${TAR_OPTIONS} ...), but Automake currently goes to a lot of trouble to support even the oldest tars, which don't support dash options at all. And I'm not sure dash options (with older tars) can be separated into different groups. Although such ancient-tar support is probably not important nowadays, more fundamentally, I don't see anything to be gained. Either GNU tar is being used, in which case it already supports the TAR_OPTIONS envvar itself, or it's not, in which case either there are different options or no options at all for the job, and something different has to be done. Automake can't solve that problem, as far as I can see. For instance, trying to chown the unpacked tree before tarring would fail. This "bug report" can be merged with 19615 or simply deleted. My attempts to use debbugs to merge the reports failed for no clear reason. Closing both bugs separately. --thanks, karl. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- doc: discuss setting uid/gid information in tarballs. In response to https://bugs.gnu.org/19615. * doc/automake.texi (Basics of Distribution): give example of specifying the TAR_OPTIONS (environment) variable used by GNU tar. diff --git a/doc/automake.texi b/doc/automake.texi index a56e7f8ee..1bf74cd73 100644 --- a/doc/automake.texi +++ b/doc/automake.texi @@ -8621,12 +8621,30 @@ More precisely, the gzipped @code{tar} file is named @c See automake #9822. @vindex TAR -You can set the environment variable @code{TAR} to override the tar -program used; it defaults to @code{tar}. @xref{The Types of -Distributions}, for how to generate other kinds of archives. +You can set the environment (or @code{Makefile.am}) variable @code{TAR} +to override the tar program used; it defaults to @code{tar}. +@xref{The Types of Distributions}, for how to generate other kinds of +archives. -For the most part, the files to distribute are automatically found by -Automake: +@vindex TAR_OPTIONS +With GNU tar, you can also set the environment (or @code{Makefile.am}) +variable @code{TAR_OPTIONS} to pass options to @code{tar}. One common +case for this is wanting to avoid using the local user's uid and gid +in the tar file, or the uid being larger than is supported by the tar +format (not uncommon nowadays). This can be done with, for example> + +@example +TAR_OPTIONS = --owner=0 --group=0 +export TAR_OPTIONS +@end example + +@noindent +The @code{export} (a GNU make feature) is necessary to pass the +variable in the environment to the @code{tar} invocation. +(For more discussion, see @url{https://bugs.gnu.org/19615}.) + +For the most part, the files to distribute are automatically +found by Automake: @itemize @bullet @item @@ -11376,13 +11394,12 @@ time may be overridden: @code{make V=1} will produce verbose output, @code{make V=0} less verbose output. Unfortunately, if @code{V} is assigned a value other than 0 or 1, -errors will result. This is problematic when a third-party program or +errors will result. This is problematic when a third-party program or library is built in the same tree and also uses the make variable -@code{V}, with different values. The best workaround is probably to +@code{V}, with different values. The best workaround is probably to set @code{AM_V_P=true} (or similar), either on the make command line -or in the @code{V}-using project's @code{Makefile.am}. For more -discussion: -@url{https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=20077}. +or in the @code{V}-using project's @code{Makefile.am}. (For more +discussion, see @url{https://bugs.gnu.org/20077}.) @end itemize @cindex default verbosity for silent rules compile finished at Thu Jun 29 17:59:48 2023