[ On Sunday, January 19, 2003 at 03:04:13 (+0100), wiz@netbsd.org wrote: ]
> Subject: bin/19916: pax-as-tar doesn't handle -L
>
> pax-as-tar does not support the -L option.
> GNU tar man page (for 1.11.2) describes this as:
>      -L number
>      --tape-length number    Change tapes after writing N*1024 bytes.

There's some strong precedent that GNU tar's '-L' is not portable anyway.

Blindly copying all kinds of weird non-portable features from GNU Tar's
command line interface for pax-as-tar is really quite pointless -- the
better alternative is to tell people to use GNU Tar when that's what
they want (e.g. pkgsrc/archivers/gtar), and otherwise to either learn
the new interface, or to switch to the native (and _standard_) pax
interface.

Here's what I made my version of the 'tar' front-end to 'pax' do, since
this is the more useful feature:

     -L            Follow all symlinks.  Warning!  This flag has the opposite
                   meaning in some other versions of tar, including the one in
                   AT&T Bell Labs Research Tenth Edition, and its meaning is
                   completely different and unrelated to symlinks in GNU Tar.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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