Re: tar -I incompatibility
>>>>> " " == Sam Couter <sam@topic.com.au> writes:
> Goswin Brederlow <goswin.brederlow@student.uni-tuebingen.de>
> wrote:
>> PS: Why not change the Solaris version to be compatible with
>> the widely used linux version? I'm sure there are more people
>> and tools out there for linux using -I then there are for
>> solaris.
> This is an incredibly Linux-centric point of view. You sound
> worse than the BSD bigots.
Just as linux-centric as the other way is solaris-centric.
Letting an option die out is bad. Changing an option name is
evil. Chaning the meaning of an option to mean something else on the
fly is pure evil[tm].
I think Debian should patch -I back to the old meaning. If
compatibility with solaris tar is wanted, then let -I print a warning
that its depreciated. In a few month give an error and maybe in a year
adopt a new meaning for -I (if thats realy wanted).
> There are many, many, many different unices that are *not*
> Linux. You can't hope to change them all to be Just Like Linux
> (tm). You'll be lucky if any of them follow Linux behaviour,
> rather than the other way around.
I don't want to change them but I also don't want to be changed by
them in ways that are plain stupid. And the -I just changing meaning
without any warning is plain stupid.
> Hint: Adopt some cross-platform habits like: "bzip2 -dc
> foo.tar.bz2 | tar xf -"
> Not only will you then become more immune to changes in
> behaviour that was non-standard to begin with, you'll also find
> adjustment to other systems a lot easier.
<sarcasm>
I like systems that don't change on a day to day basis. I don't want
"ls *" to do "rm *" tomorrow just because some other unix does it and
the author feels like it.
</sarcasm>
"tar -xIvvf file.tar.bz2" has been in use under linux for over a year
by pretty much everybody. Even if the author never released it as
stable, all linux distributions did it. I think that should count
something. Enough to at least ease the transition.
MfG
Goswin
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