Re: [Gnu-arch-users] which archive format?

[Jan Hudec]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 01:56:17AM +1100, Anand Kumria wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> GNU Arch seems to have a number of archive formats.
> 
> tla and baz have one

Tla and baz have two formats, an old one and a new one. Recent tla and
baz both can access both.

> aegis has another

Aegis has nothing to do with GNU Arch as far as I can tell. It's a
completely different project.

> likewise arx

ArX was forked back in the larch days and evolved in a separate project.
It is not GNU Arch.

> The two closest cousins (tla, baz) both understand the same format (tla
> format) however baz has some improvements which can help with both
> portability to other platforms (Windows in particular) as well as
> performing things like 'annotate'.
> 
> Are these improvement likely to be incorporated into tla?  I'm very
> reluctant to create archives in (for want of another name) 'baz format' --
> I'd much rather use a format that multiple tools understood and can use.

They already made it to tla. They are at least in the development
branch. They will appear in the next release.

> Right now that is 'tla format'; what is its future? [1]
> [1]: Will some of the modifications the aegis / ArX crew have done also be
> incorporated? Arx, from what I read, uses c--b,v for example.  Which
> allows "null" branches.

As I've said, Aegis and ArX are NOT gnu arch. They have nothing to do
with it and changes from the will not be integrated. And by the way,
IIRC GNU Arch *DOES* allow null branches using format
category--version(--revision)?.

Anyway, the semantics for branches and such are unlikely to change since
all the important developers all seem to care about backwards
compatibility quite a lot.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                - Jan Hudec `Bulb' 
<address@hidden>