🚀 go-pugleaf

Submitted-by: djm@eng.umd.edu (David J. MacKenzie)

   And also, something that nor tar nor cpio have: large file names.

   The current limit of around 100-128 characters for the filename
   is catastrophic. Simply too short!

POSIX.1 cpio format has no limit on the length of pathnames, although
some existing implementations may place artificial limits on the
length.  POSIX.1 tar format has a limit of 100 to 256 bytes, depending
on where slashes are located in the path.

   Also I guess users would appreciate: the ability to archive
   in absolute format and restore in relative. Not all users do
   relative archives. And one knows how dangerous an absolute
   archive can be. Even when I get a tape from the oustide I prefer
   being able to restore it in relative mode, without having to
   check before it all files on the archive are or not absolute.

As GNU tar has demonstrated, the handling of leading slashes in
pathnames is independent of the archive format.  It's a trivial bit or
two of code in the archiving program that can be used with any format.


Volume-Number: Volume 28, Number 62