Re: tar -I incompatibility

[Chris Gray <cgray@tribsoft.com>]

>>>>> Michael Stone writes:

(snip flamage)
    ms> I don't know whether any amount of discussion will convince
    ms> the upstream tar maintainers to undo this, but I certainly
    ms> hope that the debian version at least prevents serious silent
    ms> breakage by either reverting the change to -I and printing a
    ms> message that the option is deprecated or removing the -I flag
    ms> entirely.

The tar maintainer is closing bug reports related to this problem as
quickly as they come in, or else I would send this to the BTS, but for
the meantime, here is an uncompiled patch:



--- tar.c.orig  Sun Oct 29 17:36:32 2000
+++ tar.c       Sun Jan  7 12:39:57 2001
@@ -362,7 +362,7 @@
               PATTERN                at list/extract time, a globbing PATTERN\n
\
   -o, --old-archive, --portability   write a V7 format archive\n\
       --posix                        write a POSIX format archive\n\
-  -j, --bzip2                        filter the archive through bzip2\n\
+  -I, -j --bzip2                     filter the archive through bzip2\n\
   -z, --gzip, --ungzip               filter the archive through gzip\n\
   -Z, --compress, --uncompress       filter the archive through compress\n\
       --use-compress-program=PROG    filter through PROG (must accept -d)\n"),
@@ -371,7 +371,7 @@
 \n\
 Local file selection:\n\
   -C, --directory=DIR          change to directory DIR\n\
-  -T, -I, --files-from=NAME    get names to extract or create from file NAME\n\
+  -T, --files-from=NAME        get names to extract or create from file NAME\n\
       --null                   -T reads null-terminated names, disable -C\n\
       --exclude=PATTERN        exclude files, given as a globbing PATTERN\n\
   -X, --exclude-from=FILE      exclude globbing patterns listed in FILE\n\
@@ -674,6 +674,11 @@
        ignore_zeros_option = 1;
        break;
 
+      case 'I':
+              fprintf(stderr,
+"%s: Warning: the use of the I flag will soon mean --files-from
+for compatibility with Solaris tar.  Please use the j flag instead
+when you mean --bzip2.", program_name);
       case 'j':
        set_use_compress_program_option ("bzip2");
        break;
@@ -796,7 +801,7 @@
        break;
 
       case 'T':
-      case 'I': /* for compatibility with Solaris tar */
+/*      case 'I': /* for compatibility with Solaris tar */
        files_from_option = optarg;
        break;
 
-- 
Got jag?  http://www.tribsoft.com