[Bug 1532] Review Request -- First Test of Loading tarfile info IMFS

[bugzilla-daemon at rtems.org]

https://www.rtems.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1532





--- Comment #15 from Ralf Corsepius <ralf.corsepius at rtems.org>  2010-06-09 22:38:40 ---
> Yes tar has a range of compatibility issues. This how-ever relates to the
> implementation in RTEMS and that is not the purpose of this bug.
Not quite.


The patch invokes a host's tar and RTEMS implicitly expects this host's tar to
produce a specific tar format - This is highly unreliable and non-portable in
general.


Furthermore, in the latest version of the patch contains this:
 tar cf - --exclude-vcs home symlink && rm -f symlink
where its predecessor had contained this:
 tar cf - home symlink && rm -f symlink

This is a regression of "the new version" over the "old version". 

The "--exclude-vcs" is GNU tar proprietary and thus is non-portable.

> ... can we construct an autoconf test for a specific version of tar
> we know is compatible with the implementation in RTEMS ?
It's a can of worms, IMO.

1. The "RTEMS tar format" would have to be "clearly specified" (ustar, 7bit
ASCII, case-sensitivity of the hosting OS/build OS (recently there have been
reports on OS X being case insenistive!!!!), file permissions (consider umask))
...

2. The details of the "RTEMS tar loader" would have to be clearly specified.
What does the RTEMS tar loader need and what does it ignore?

3. Which cmd-line options does which tar implementation need to produce a tar
ball to meet 1. + 2.
Note: A tar-implementation defaults may change over time, as well as individual
tar implementation might temporarily be broken (Both has happened in gtar's
history)

That said, ATM, I only see one possibility: provide a sample tarball as part of
an autoconf check and let this autoconf check try to reproduce this sample
using an ultra conservative set of tar command-line options (tar [xc]f -) +
locales set to C).

If this fails, fall back to disabling this test.

-- 
Configure bugmail: https://www.rtems.org/bugzilla/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are watching all bug changes.