Re: perl code for decoding tar files...

[Michael Alan Dorman <mdorman@calder.med.miami.edu>]

joey@finlandia.infodrom.north.de (Martin Schulze) writes:
> While generating a .deb file dpkg-deb uses "tar c --exlude DEBIAN f
> - ".  If GNU tar encountes a long filename, it uses two records in
> the resulting tar file, one starting/ending with something like
> /@/LongLink/@/.

././@LongLink

> The tar extracter of dpkg-deb is a complete rewrite by Bruce
> because it has to take care of already installed files, conffiles
> and the like.  *This* extracter can't handle those LongLinks.

Unfortunately, neither can cpio, because cpio went straight to using
POSIX-style tars, while GNU tar claims to support a proposed style of
POSIX-style tars from an early draft of the standard.

Thus their methods for supporting long filenames are totally
different, and GNU tar isn't going to get it right until 2.0, and who
knows when that'll be.

I'm finding it easiest to simply remove the cpio cross-checking code
from dpkg-source, since we're pretty committed to using tar archives.

Mike.


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