Re: Broken tar invocation in mk-origtargz

[Felix Natter <fnatter@gmx.net>]

Joachim Breitner <nomeata@debian.org> writes:

> Hi,

hello Andreas, Joachim, mentors,

> Am Sonntag, den 09.08.2015, 11:23 +0200 schrieb Andreas Tille:
>> On Sun, Aug 09, 2015 at 09:56:41AM +0200, Joachim Breitner wrote:
>> > I’m missing the context of this mail,
>> 
>> context is in the debian-mentors archive[1]
>> 
>> > but if it is a work-around for
>> > the tar bug 
>> > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=748244
>> > then I’d really rather like to see that bug fixed in tar!
>> 
>> While I agree I think this workaround could be stored in BTS anyway.
>
> thanks for the context. Indeed the work-around is a good one (comparted
> to say, extracting the archive, deleting the file, compressing it
> again), and I would not object a patch that uses that form of invoking
> tar in mk-origtargz.

I filed a bug in the bug-tar ML (I don't think there is a bug-tracker
for tar?):
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2015-08/msg00006.html
but I don't think it will be fixed soon (they might even not fix it
and add a stderr warning for in-place deletion or even disable
the feature).

Thanks for pointing out #748244. Did anyone actually file a bug against
tar? A search does not reveal anything Debian-related:
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/cgi-bin/namazu.cgi?query=--delete&submit=Search!&idxname=bug-tar&max=20&result=normal&sort=date%3Alate
(but there is already one other bug report for in-place deletion from
2014)

I don't mind fixing this (in the next few days), but also see no problem
in filing a tag=newcomer bug against devscripts ("[mk-origtargz]") for
fixing in debconf, mentioning the workaround.
(This is a pretty bad bug, but it's already broken in jessie, so it
probably doesn't matter whether it's fixed tomorrow or next month)

Cheers and Best Regards,
-- 
Felix Natter