Re: tar vs device special files

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%bec.de@localhost>]

On Sunday, October 29, 2023 12:40:06 AM CEST RVP wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Oct 2023, Mouse wrote:
> > I'm having trouble seeing what's responsible, and in particular am
> > wondering whether this is my bug or /bin/tar's bug or what.  (It
> > doesn't help that I haven't managed to find a clear spec for tar
> > format; the closest I've found so far is a description of what pax, in
> > its (supposedly-)tar-compatible mode, is supposed to read/write.)
> 
> All of this can be found in:
> 
> src/external/bsd/libarchive/dist/libarchive/
archive_read_support_format_tar.c

There is even a man page going over many of the variants and the details.

> Maybe your tar could supply a "ustar" magic char. seq. at 0x101 for
> libarchive. (see: header_ustar() vs. header_old_tar())

I don't think any one else cares about pre-ustar. Pretty much any reader and 
writer around uses at least ustar and generally wants to have extended POSIX 
as well when caring about large files. I see no reasons for adding random hacks 
for outdated tar programs with little real world exposure, changes are high it 
is going to break something with other archives.

Joerg