Re: .deb format: let's use 0.939, zstd, drop bzip2

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

On Sat, 2019-05-11 at 12:08:05 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> John Goerzen writes ("Re: .deb format: let's use 0.939, zstd, drop bzip2"):
> > Plus, of course, when discussing tar, there is always the "which tar
> > format do you mean?" question.
> > 
> > https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/libarchive-dev/tar.5.en.html

This should be documented already in deb(5), if it is not clear or you
feel it lacks detail I'd be glad to improve it.

> > I should note that dpkg does have a maximum file size limit that's
> > rather lower than the ar limit, due to its interpretation of tar
> > headers.  I believe I filed a bug on this but I'm not able to find it
> > right now, unfortunately.

Nope. This was already mentioned in this thread. dpkg-deb's tar
implementation has no practical limits anymore since 1.18.24 (#850834),
also documented in deb(5).

> IDK if dpkg is still using this but back in the dqy, when I needed
> dpkg to handle each file in a tarball individually, I found a tar
> parsing library under a rock somewhere.  It wasn't a bad one but I'm
> sure it could be improved...

The tar extraction code has seen substantial rework since its
introduction. I'd also probably say it's pretty robust compared to
many of its alternatives.

Thanks,
Guillem