Hello.
Glad to know that you find lzip useful. Feature requests are welcome in this
list.
themanwittaplan17 wrote:
I'd like to use Lzip with tarballs using tarlz, however tarlz uses its own tar
implementation (does not utilize the installed GNU tar) and therefore lacks
some features i use in my workflow.
Tl;dr: use tarlz as compressor for GNU tar by using a command like this:
tar -c <arguments> | tarlz -z9 --no-solid -o /mnt/backup/datadir.tar.lz
(See http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/manual/tarlz_manual.html#Invoking-tarlz).
Tarlz is an independent tar implementation without any relation with any
other tar. I plan to keep tarlz simple and avoid non-standard extensions.
For example, I do not plan to implement extended attributes, selinux, nor
the full pax format.
I use GNU tar like this:
$ find ./directory-of-data -type f -print0 | LC_ALL=C sort -z | sed -zE
's~^\./~~' | POSIXLY_CORRECT=1 tar -cvI'lzip -9a' --totals --posix --xattrs
--selinux --full-time
--pax-option='exthdr.name=%d/PaxHeaders/%f,delete=atime,delete=ctime' --utc
--acls --numeric-owner --owner=0 --group=0 --mode='a=r,u+w,a+X' --no-recursion
--null -T - -f '/mnt/backup/datadir.tar.lz'
Note that option '-a' of lzip is ignored when compressing.
Options '--mode' and '--numeric-owner' are in my TODO list.
I do not plan to implement options --xattrs, --selinux, --pax-option,
--acls, or --null. Regarding '--null', POSIX is in the way to proscribe file
names with newline characters[1]. So, I think it is better to not add
support for such file names to tarlz.
[1] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/pax.html
section FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Options --totals, --full-time, and --utc may be implemented someday if they
aren't too much trouble.
Option --posix is not needed; tarlz only produces posix archives.
About --no-recursion versus --no-recursive, GNU tar seems to be the outlier
here. See, for example,
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Traversing-symlinks.html
. Maybe someone could suggest to the GNU tar maintainers to add the alias
'--no-recursive' to GNU tar.
Tarlz sounds like the right tool to use to have a per-file-compressed archive,
Yes, that is the idea. As a fallback, when tarlz lacks some option, it can
be used as the compressor for GNU tar as explained above. I think these two
modes cover all your needs (as specified in your example command line).
Best regards,
Antonio.
