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

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

nia <nia%NetBSD.org@localhost> writes:

> On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 10:55:53AM -0400, Greg Troxel wrote:
>> Earlier, I thought bsdtar didn't work, but today it does.   So I would
>> amend point 5 to say "use bsdtar always on NetBSD <= 8", which feels
>> like a much more reasonable solution from the BSD point of virw :-)
>
> Forcing bsdtar for everything on NetBSD <= 8 seems like the best solution
> that avoids most future problems.

Thanks for commenting.

Since I wrote earlier, it was pointed out to me that setting bsdtar on
NetBSD that has libarchive tar (what we call "bsdtar", I think) results
in /bin/tar being used.  And it would force a dependency on the bsdtar
package if MKBSDTAR were set to no in mk.conf.  So I am leaning to just
changing the default for all NetBSD, expecting no change in behavior
 >=9.

> Ultimately with less people testing these older configurations any
> USES_SPECIAL_TAR_STUFF variable will be subject to rot.

Agreed; we had already more or less give up on netbsd-7, and I'm afraid
netbsd-8 will be fairly troubled in not that long.