RPM roadmapping

[Les Mikesell]

Alan Cox wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 06:04:07PM -0400, Adam Jackson wrote:
>>> cpio is a real standard archive format (there are something like a half
>>> dozen _different_ tar formats around) plus it is very simple.
>> At the time only cpio was standardized.  POSIX 2001 tar is probably
>> quite adequate by now.  Certainly it's widely deployed on linux.
> 
> POSIX 2001 tar is an ugly horrible hack. What you have to understand
> is that cpio is a really elegant archive format attached to a truely
> braindead application (/bin/cpio) while tar is a mass of ugly multi-layered
> hacks heaped on each other with a nice application.

I'm pretty sure I remember a sysv version of cpio that produced archives 
that other versions couldn't read (something about the maximum values of 
device numbers), so I wouldn't say its design was perfect either.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com