Re: increasingly packages need gtar or pax-with-libarchive

[Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%joyent.com@localhost>]

* On 2020-03-10 at 13:51 GMT, Greg Troxel wrote:

> 3) Add some variable e.g. SHINY_PAX_FORMAT that if set, forces gtar if
> default tar isn't good enough.

I'd like some variant of this.  It's a bit annoying when people add
dependencies on bsdtar unconditionally for those of us who have native
gtar or otherwise that can handle the archive fine.

We should state what is required by the package and let the
infrastructure figure out whether a dependency needs to be pulled in
or not.  Hardcoding implementation details feels very wrong.

Something like TAR_FORMAT_REQUIRED that has a list of additional
formats required by each package, allowing for future flags to easily
be added, then we hook that into the tools infrastructure to figure
out if the native pax/tar can support that and handle otherwise.

It would be more upfront work but would be the correct way forward.

-- 
Jonathan Perkin  -  Joyent, Inc.  -  www.joyent.com