Re: Incorrect information in the manual about the tar-v7 option

[Ralf Wildenhues]

[ <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.automake.bugs/4315> ]

Hello Vincent, all,

Thanks for the report.

* Vincent Lefevre wrote on Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 06:09:43PM CEST:
> 
> The automake manual (several versions) says about the tar-v7 option:
> 
>      `tar-v7' selects the old V7 tar format.  This is the historical
>      default.  This antiquated format is understood by all tar
>      implementations and supports file names with up to 99 characters.
> 
> This is incorrect.

Well, I think at the time the sentence was written in 2004:
<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.tar.bugs/433/focus=464>
it was likely correct.  It only became incorrect when BusyBox entered
the scene, grew to be widely used, but with limited functionality.
(The whole thread is quite informative.)

> Old versions of BusyBox (such as v1.6.1, currently
> used on Nokia's Internet tablets) don't support this format. See:
> 
>   https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3033

Interesting.  :-/

> Shouldn't tar-ustar be the default instead of tar-v7?

I'm not an expert on tar implementations and their issues,
and what would be a good default nowadays.

Help?  I Cc:ed a couple of people knowledgeable about tar history,
and the automake list.  The question how far autotools should cater
to limitations of new and open source software like BusyBox is quite
a difficult one to answer in general, to me.  Should autotools add even
more workarounds, or should rather simply BusyBox be fixed?  Do added
workarounds here remove the incentive to fix the buggy software there?
How much should the fact that BusyBox is actively developed be taken
into account (unlike, say, pdksh, with its quite stable set of bugs)?

Thanks, and sorry for the wide distribution,
Ralf