Re: libpax?

[Paul Eggert]

> From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Wolfgang_J=E4hrling?= <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 15:31:22 +0200
> 
> We will implement a tar file system for the GNU operating system
> (sometimes called GNU/Hurd) sooner or later anyway, as this is a
> much requested feature

Yes, it's a nice thing to have.  Stott Parker and I implemented a tar
filesystem a while ago, using GNU tar 1.11.1:

P. R. Eggert & D. S. Parker
File Systems in User Space
Proc. Winter 1993 USENIX Conference,
San Diego, CA (January 1993), pp. 229-240.
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~stott/ifs/

This was for SunOS 4.0.1 with different technology, but perhaps
you can use similar ideas for GNU/Hurd.


> I want to ask if there is any chance that the archive handling stuff
> will be put in a library.  Another variant is to make tarfs an
> optional part of paxutils that will only build on GNU (which might
> be a good idea anyway), thus one would be able to share the code
> easiely anyway, and a library would not be strictly needed.  I'd
> like to hear which variant you prefer.

I'd prefer whichever is easier for you, and which has the minimal
changes to the existing code.  (These are competing objectives, I know.)

Any library would be GPLed (not LGPLed).