Re: [Module::Build] Archive::Tar file format

[Randy W. S. <Ra...@Th...>]

On 12/20/2003 5:23 PM, Jos I. Boumans wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 20 Dec 2003, Ken Williams wrote:
> 
>>On Saturday, December 20, 2003, at 12:17  PM, Randy W. Sims wrote:
>>
>>>Well this atleast proves that the paths are there, thus it is not a
>>>problem with M::B, but I think this is going to be a big issue for
>>>Windows users. I think if it's possible for Archive::Tar to be better
>>>compatible with other tools, it should. If I knew anything about the
>>>tar  format, I'd try to provide a patch. Since I don't, I'll just cc
>>>the maintainer. ;-)
>>
>>I have some kind of vague recollection that maybe this issue in
>>Archive::Tar has been fixed privately by Kane and is just waiting for
>>him to release it.
>>
>>Kane, can you put Glenn out of his misery?  Or am I remembering wrong?
> 
> 
> well, even though m::b may use A::T to build an archive, and ppm uses it
> to extract, it may not be the same A::T -- AS perl ships with a very old
> version of A::T which does not support the full tar standard (including
> the prefix header). Several people have already advised AS to upgrade A::T
> to a recent version, that works on win32 and actually supports most of the
> spec...
> 
> the easiest fix would be to require the client to have a::t > 1.00 to make
> sure this doesn't happen, but i'm not sure how to enforce this...

Hi Jos,

I just saw that A::T 1.08 hit CPAN and was very quick to try it out. 
It's looking a lot better since you've taken over maintenance on it, and 
more specifically this latest release has fixed some annoying problems 
on Win32. However the above problem is unfortunately still present. I've 
verified that using this latest version to create an archive does not 
solve the problem with most Windows utilities being unable to read the 
path information in the archive. This problem does not occur with 
archive created with GNU tar. As this problem has been reported several 
times on the M::B mailing list (and is apparently becoming a critical 
issue for Win32 M::B users), I'm afraid this problem is going to 
continue to plague us unless we can find a resolution. If I knew 
anything of the tar format I'd submit a patch--Is there anything I can 
do to help resolve this issue.

Thanks,
Randy.