Re: Debian GNU/Hurd crossinstaller: "crosshurd"
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 09:46:23PM +0200, Marco Gerards wrote:
> Jeff Bailey <jbailey@nisa.net> writes:
>
> > > Another problem right now is the translator vs. tarring up /dev stuff.
> > > What are you going to do about this? With Marco's patch floating
> > > around, wouldn't it make sense to talk to the Debian tar maintainer
> > > (Bdale) while he's around? Or are we going to take a different road?
> >
> > Different path. It turns out that the only reason they don't use
> > MAKEDEV is because it was slow. We don't have that issue so will just
> > use MAKEDEV. I lost track of the thread for Marco's tar patch. I don't
> > remember if we ever decided it was an attribute or a file type.
>
> (FYI:) It = passive translator
>
> I was trying to explain the star maintainer that passive translators
> are a filetype and not an attribute of a file. But he isn't convinced
> of this yet...
That is because he is probably correct. Remember that you can set a
passive translator on any node, an empty file, a file with content, or
a directory, or whatever. On the other hand, it is not possible to
set a translator to a symlink (I don't think you can stack passive
translators, can you?)
So, it might very well be that the right behaviour for tar would be to
tar up the underlying file and its translator setting (as an attribute
to the file). So far we only have ocnsidered empty nodes carrying
passive translators.
> What matter more to me is having this patch (or a reworked version) in
> GNU tar. This cannot be done in a POSIX compatible way without doing a
> _LOT_ of GNU tar work. Jeff, what would be the best way to get this in
> GNU tar? (Or at least to get some comments about this?).
For GNU tar, having a patch that just saves the translator setting
(not the underlying file) would be a good first thing to have.
However, saving the underlying file should also be consdered as an
option, because some translators might require it in the future.
POSIX compatibility is not a requirement for GNU tra today (as GNU tar
is already not POSIX compatible).
What would be more interesting is translator support in Linux ext2fs
(to the extend of being able to read and write passive translator
settings), so you could unpack such a tar file under GNU/Linux on a
Hurd partition.
Thanks,
Marcus
Reply to: