On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 12:28:15AM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote: > Frankly, I don't see why gnu tar needs to be compatible with > OS-specific versions because most of those are feature-poor anyway.
the one reason for gnu tar to do that is so that it can be a drop-in replacement for those crappy versions. on every non-linux machine i have to use, the first thing i do is download and compile all the GNU tools including tar. i then change the PATH setting to include /usr/local/bin/gnu at the start. if the GNU commands were not backwards-compatible then it would be dangerous to do that. > I agree with the suggestion that we modify tar for Debian to > provide -I at least for compatibility for one more release. i think that whatever we do is going to be broken somehow. leaving it as -I means that GNU tar would no longer be a drop-in replacement for a proprietary tar. changing it to -j means that an upgraded GNU tar is no longer a drop-in replacement for older versions of GNU tar. both options suck. craig -- craig sanders