Re: LSB Spec 1.0 Criticism
schilling@fokus.gmd.de (Joerg Schilling) wrote on 18.08.01 in <200108181953.VAA29295@fokus.gmd.de>:
> >From: kaih@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen)
>
> >> On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 05:51:49PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> >> > Previously Theodore Tso wrote:
> >> > > CPIO format files specify file ownerships by numeric ID, not by name.
> >> >
> >> > As far as I know that is not true.
> >>
> >> Check out a POSIX.1 specification. Even the extended CPIO format only
> >> uses numbers for user and group ownership. Or for an on-line
> >> reference, check out:
> >>
> >> http://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man4/cpio.4.asp
> >>
> >> You'll see that even when the ASCII CPIO header is used, the user and
> >> group ownership is expressed in a six character wide field in octal
> >> ascii digits, zero-padded on the left.
>
> >The next (Austin) revision drops the cpio utility. It keeps the format for
> >pax, though, and it still doesn't do non-binary ids.
>
> The cpio format should have never made it into the POSIX spec. It is a very
> ugly design which cannot be extended at all without completely beaking
> compatibility.
It was believen necessary for compatibility. If you want to throw it out,
you should likewise throw out the old tar format, and then the new forman
wouldn't have needed to be so ugly.
> >And the new compromise extended tar format, while it can do just about
> >everything, is really a butt-ugly design.
>
> It is a really elegant design which allows infinite future extension without
> breaking forward/backwards compatibility.
Elegant?! I feel the need to barf whenever I see the spec.
Ok, if you would junk all the backward compatibility stuff, *then* it
could be called elegant. But that's not what happened.
MfG Kai
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