Re[2]: [Mingw-users] Packaging Conventions

[Paul S. <pa...@is...>]

Hello Lado,

Lado Brisar <lb...@ma...> wrote:

LB> I can't found working tar.exe which supports windows style paths. I've
LB> got three ports (one from cygnus site, one is built with mingw and one
LB> with msvc) but all of them refuse to work with windows style paths like:

LB>   tar cvf d:\tmp\test.tar *

LB> It choke even if I change "d:\tmp\test.tar" to "d:/tmp/test.tar"..

    RTFM! Use --force-local ':' syntax is standard convention for
inter-machine exchange.

LB> I really couldn't call that a working windows port!

    tar is a POSIX utility.

LB> Of course, gzip and bzip2 handle windows style paths fine, it's just that
LB> bloody tar which die always when I want to use drive letter in a path.

LB> Also, only cygwin port supports "tar zxvf ..." and "tar zcvf ...", but that's
LB> another issue.

    Why, pw32's support it, too ;-)

>> Above all else, let's discourage any formats other than the above.
>> Not everyone has current versions of arj, zoo, lha, and so on.

LB> And almost *nobody* (of windows users) has current version of
LB> tar/gzip/bzip2. Note, .tar.bz2 is less popular in the windows world than
LB> .rar (which has even better compression ration than bzip) or .arj.
LB> Frankly, .tar.bz2 is not popular at all on windows platform. ;-)

LB> IMHO, binaries should be always packaged in .zip format (mingw is a
LB> *windows* port of gcc).

    Do not consider your mission over - repeat this again and again on
every occasion! For me *personally* it doesn't matter which format to
use. But still, if it won't be zip, sooner or later I'll find *myself*
in "door locked, key thrown away" position - when I'll stuck with
inet-challenged box to which I brought stuff on diskettes where
wasn't enough space for tar+gzip, or I just forgot them, or there was
read fault.

     That's about my personal feelings. But what we heard from
continual list subscribers isn't so bright either ;-) And finally, we
should not forget about novices and greeners - they might not hear
about such stuff as tar or gzip at all (but if they never heard about
pkzip, they for sure should not touch any devel tools). We *may not*
enforce our "cool" knowledge on them. Format for distribution of
binaries and format which commonly used by experienced people are two
different things. I wish the second was tar+gzip or +bzip2, but the
former should be as mundane as possible!

       But note that's all about windows binaries. Sources and
other-platforms-hosted tools *completely* different story.

LB> Sources could be in whatever exotic format, as long as maintainer
LB> provide a link to working windows port of that archiver (and detailed
LB> instructions how to expand archive). Of course, instructions should be
LB> on the same web page (or readme file in ftp directory).

    What web page? What ftp README? Who will write and maintain them?
We'll have clean links in clean faq, and of course will provide
ready-to-run accessiblity binaries.

LB> Regards,
LB> Lado Brisar.


--
Paul Sokolovsky, IT Specialist
http://www.brainbench.com/transcript.jsp?pid=11135