RPM roadmapping

[Jonathan Dieter]

On Thu, 2007-08-02 at 16:20 +0200, Michael Schroeder wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 04:53:43PM +0300, Jonathan Dieter wrote:
> > What about extending the cpio format?  Something called cpio2, perhaps. 
> > 
> > The main problem with using cpio is that individual files have a limit
> > of 2GB (which isn't a problem in most cases, but it is a limit).  Why
> > not push a newer cpio format that changes all 16-bit and 32-bit records
> > to 64-bit (along with specifying endienness)?
> 
> Actually the cpio format used in rpm is 'newc', which encodes
> all values as 8 ASCII bytes of hex. So it's a 4 GB size limit.
> 
> But, as already said, it's not just the cpio format you'd have
> to extend, it's also rpm's header data.
> 
> Cheers,
>   Michael.

Fair enough, though 4 GB may not be large enough when we're talking
virtual hard drives (see message just posted a minute ago).

And, yes, there wouldn't be much point in extending the cpio format if
we didn't fix the rpm header as well.  But I wouldn't see much point in
extending the cpio format if rpm wasn't going to use it.


Jonathan
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/attachments/20070802/e3f8a86d/attachment.sig>