On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 06:28:20AM -0700, Aaron Toponce wrote: > > Lastly, DEBs aren't built on top of CPIO, but gzipped tarballs > instead. I personally find this superior, as CPIO is an obscure > technology, that only RPM is using. Everyone else in the world are > using tarballs as well.
You're kidding, right? Here's a bit of history (from the Mac OS man page for cpio): """The original cpio and find utilities were written by Dick Haight while working in AT&T's Unix Support Group. They first appeared in 1977 in PWB/UNIX 1.0, the ``Programmer's Work Bench'' system developed for use within AT&T. They were first released outside of AT&T as part of System III Unix in 1981. As a result, cpio actually predates tar, even though it was not well-known outside of AT&T until some time later.""" [1] The cpio and tar utilities have both been around for a _very_ long time. Traditionally, they have both had various strengths and weaknesses, but in the end, it doesn't really matter (some people prefer one over the other[2, 3], but I really don't care). There are many common uses of cpio, particularly when portability is essential. Whatever distribution(s) you believe in, your system wouldn't boot without cpio (initrd images are compressed cpio archives). I don't use cpio all that often, but it pains me to see it maligned. :) [1] http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/cpio.1.html [2] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/1213 [3] http://rightsock.com/~kjw/Ramblings/tar_v_cpio.html -- Andrew McNabb http://www.mcnabbs.org/andrew/ PGP Fingerprint: 8A17 B57C 6879 1863 DE55 8012 AB4D 6098 8826 6868 -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info (unsubscribe here): http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
