On Mon, 2002-01-14 at 17:17, Massimiliano Mirra wrote: > On Mon, Jan 14, 2002 at 12:08:58PM +0900, Chris Gehlker wrote: > > On Macs, gnutar will be their if the user installed the optional > > Developer Tools. It a pretty safe bet that she did in order to build > > ruby in the first place. > > Good, this leaves a door open. No, Hopefully there will be binary packages for the average-user to install. They might not have tar. > > Backquotes work fine but 'tar' is not symlinked to gnutar. Rather it will > > invoke BSD tar which, IIRC, needs an explicit z parameter to deal with .tgz > > files. So you are better off with > > `tar -xzf #{pkgdir}` > > Or > > `gnutar xcf #{pkgdir}` > > Sorry? GNU tar needs a `z' parameter to deal with gzipped files, too. > E.g. to pack: > > tar zcf archive.tar.gz dir > > And to unpack: > > tar zxf archive.tar.gz > > > I think the former will work on every BSD. > > So it seems that we're not limited to GNU tar. That's good news. Also. Using this format will work with ALL tar's (at least that I've seen) gzip -dc filename.tar.gz | tar xf - That will work with a tar that doesn't take the z-flag. And there is alot of them. > To summarize, the chances for tar as compression tool for packets are: > > - Linux: will work everywhere. > > - BSD: idem. > > - Other Unices: idem, I guess. Not at all. lots of unices does 1) Not include a gnutar (but that's solvable as shown above) 2) Not include a gzip but only the old compress/uncompress programs. If there is a way for gzip to create "compress"-archive (.Z normaly) than we could use that for unix-compability because gzip will unpack .Z without problem. I don't know if it can create them though. The only problem is that compress sucks. > - Mac/Mac OS X: idem, as it is needed to install Ruby. Again.. no > - Windows: winzip could maybe do it. Winzip costs money. Don't expect everyone to have it. I don't. > - Hand helds: don't know. Probably only those running Linux (iPAQ?). My ipaq has both tar and gzip but don't count on it. > Anyway, I'm somewhat biased for an all-Ruby solution, but a > compression *format* (no matter its speed or ratio) is still something > that must be chosen carefully. I also believe in a all-Ruby solution. I believe in using a ruby/zlib-module and then coding something in it. That would ofcourse require everyone to install ruby/zlib but that's a one-time-thing. I feels more natural to install a library than to install binaries that you might need to have in your path. /Erik -- Erik BéČfors | erik / bagfors.nu Supporter of free software | GSM +46 733 279 273 fingerprint: 6666 A85B 95D3 D26B 296B 6C60 4F32 2C0B 693D 6E32