Alan Cox wrote:
On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 06:04:07PM -0400, Adam Jackson wrote:
>> cpio is a real standard archive format (there are something like a half
>> dozen _different_ tar formats around) plus it is very simple.
> At the time only cpio was standardized. POSIX 2001 tar is probably
> quite adequate by now. Certainly it's widely deployed on linux.
POSIX 2001 tar is an ugly horrible hack. What you have to understand
is that cpio is a really elegant archive format attached to a truely
braindead application (/bin/cpio) while tar is a mass of ugly multi-layered
hacks heaped on each other with a nice application.
I'm pretty sure I remember a sysv version of cpio that produced archives
that other versions couldn't read (something about the maximum values of
device numbers), so I wouldn't say its design was perfect either.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell(a)gmail.com