Bug#3100: bug#3100

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

Bdale Garbee writes ("Bug#3100: bug#3100"):
> I believe that the right thing to do is either to have the 'rmt' executable
> be provided as part of the tar package (not with cpio, as Brian Mays proposed
> in his reply to this bug report, since tar is a base package and cpio is not),
> or it should be kept as part of a separate package.  The more I think about it,
> the more I favor the latter.

I think this is unnecessarily granular.  We already have 400-odd
packages, can we please not create another tiny one for no
particularly good reason ?

> Brian and I have exchanged email about rmt being with tar instead of cpio,
> and he asked whether 'mt' should then become part of the tar package as well.
> It's not clear to me that this aggregation of mt with a particular archiver
> makes any sense.  Opinions?

mt and rmt are distributed by the GNU people with cpio.  cpio isn't
large, and ought to be installed on almost any system (it's sometimes
assumed to be present by things).

Is it really that awful to have to install cpio to get mt and rmt ??

Ian.