sasaki@harvard.ARPA (Marty Sasaki) (04/06/85)
Now that I've gotten into the software distribution biz (GNU EMACS) I've learned all about tar and shar formats. Why doesn't anyone use ar anymore? It does pretty much what you want and for bundling files together doesn't offer any less functionality than tar or shar. Am I missing something? -- ---------------- Marty Sasaki net: sasaki@harvard.{arpa,uucp} Havard University Science Center phone: 617-495-1270 One Oxford Street Cambridge, MA 02138
jlo@ucbvax.ARPA (Jeff Lo) (04/08/85)
> Now that I've gotten into the software distribution biz (GNU EMACS) I've > learned all about tar and shar formats. Why doesn't anyone use ar > anymore? It does pretty much what you want and for bundling files > together doesn't offer any less functionality than tar or shar. Am I > missing something? > -- > ---------------- > Marty Sasaki net: sasaki@harvard.{arpa,uucp} > Havard University Science Center phone: 617-495-1270 > One Oxford Street > Cambridge, MA 02138 ar isn't too commonly used for things like distributions because it doesn't have the same format in all versions of UNIX. For example, in 4.2BSD, (perhaps somewhat earlier) ar was changed to be completey ascii rather than part binary so that mailers could handle it. However, not everyone has 4.2, so shar was invented since all you need to unpack it is the Bourne shell, which every UNIX site has. Jeff Lo UUCP: ..!ucbvax!jlo ARPA: jlo@ucbvax CSNET: jlo%ucbvax@csnet-relay
gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (04/10/85)
> Why doesn't anyone use ar anymore?
Because there are at least 5 different "ar" archive formats in common
use. As of UNIX System V Release 2 and 4.2BSD, the latest formats are
more-or-less compatible (the main difference, apart from object library
symbol tables, is that member names are /-terminated on SVR2 and space-
terminated on 4.2BSD) and support portable completely text archives.
If everyone had a common version of a recent "ar", it would be the most
convenient way to package sources for distribution. Other alternatives
include the ASCII-header version of "cpio", which not everyone has either.
P.S. It would be nice if the 4.2BSD "ar" would support /-terminated
member names in addition to space-terminated ones.