On Jun 18, Joerg Schilling wrote: > >From: Chris Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >> If you only use tar x or tar c, and don't know what else is supported you > >> believe that GNU tar is sufficient. > > >FWIW Debian now includes star as an optional package for both 3.0 and > >sid (unstable); however, the default is GNU tar because that's what > >people are used to. But star is there if people want it... > > But if it does not get installed by default people who don't know it > will not use it.
True enough; but since it's not a drop-in replacement for GNU tar, it's not suitable for the default tar in a Linux distribution (for example, -j is not included as of 1.5a02, and it has different long option syntax). Like it or not, Linux people expect tar -jtf or tar --exclude='*~' -zcf to work--though I guess you can argue with their aesthetic sense :-). OTOH, it might be worthwhile for the *BSDs to adopt it, since they don't use GNU tar anyway, but they don't like GPLed software, except when it's the compiler... Incidentally, there seems to be a weird problem in the man page entry for -z... it looks like a bit of a sentence got broken up by another. Chris -- Chris Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
