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

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

* On 2020-03-11 at 13:58 GMT, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 02:43:07PM +0000, Jonathan Perkin wrote:
> > * 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.
> 
> The primary reason why bsdtar is preferable to gtar is that it can be
> provided by the tree without requiring other extraction tools.

Yeh I'm certainly not suggesting that for a host that has neither a
suitable bsdtar or gtar that we should be building gtar on that host,
I'm merely objecting to the large number of EXTRACT_USING=bsdtar that
is completely unnecessary for any hosts with native gtar.

There have also been some cases where the EXTRACT_USING=bsdtar has
been actively harmful, though I can't recall exactly where right now.

If we instead signal to the infrastructure what is required to
successfully extract, and let that figure out the best way for the
host in question, then everyone wins.

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