There have been issues on Solaris with Sage if the version of tar used is not GNU tar. GNU uses it's own format for tar (how unusual), called 'gnu'.
However, but according to the GNU tar manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Formats.html#SEC125 future versions of GNU tar will by default switch to a new version called 'posix'. It's the very last sentence "Usually, GNU tar is configured to create archives in ‘gnu’ format, however, future version will switch to ‘posix’. " I just downloaded the latest GNU tar, and see by default it still writes in 'gnu' format. If GNU's intension is to switch to POSIX format, would it not be sensible for Sage to do this? This will probably mean Sage can be built on Solaris without having GNU tar. Assuming the tar files are created on sage.math, the simplest way would be to update 'tar' on sage.math (version 1.19) to the latest version (1.22), but configure it to write by default in POSIX format, rather than the GNU format. $ ./configure 'DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT=POSIX' will create a version of GNU tar which writes by default in POSIX format. That would seem to have some technical advantages and probably would allow non-GNU tar versions to extract the files. I would suggest that /bin/tar is moved to /bin/tar.old, and that the latest GNU tar is installed, but configured to write in POSIX format by default. An update of tar would be beneficial for other reasons too. It would allow better compression algorithms to be used in compressing files, for those that want to create compressed tar files. Dave --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
