🚀 go-pugleaf

I have a problem and not much time to develop a solution (doesn't that
always seem to be the case).

For the near term we are locked into using an old version of LynxOS
(1.2, I believe) and the TAR on that OS produces wierd archives.  It
seems that if you are archiving a directory hierarchy the directory
path is archived in a tar header (size field zero), followed by headers
containing only the 'basename's of the files in that dir (followed by
the content of the file). The files in '.' are preceded by a header
with a NULL name field but with the perms and owner/group, etc., all
correct for 'dot'.  I always wondered why, when indexing tapes on an
Apollo Domain system which were written on LynxOS, the path would have
'//' just before the basename and now I guess I know why (sort of).

I can read these tapes on HP-UX, using GNU TAR - not the HP TAR, but
an index under gnutar (gtar -tv) doesn't show the pathnames for each
file entry, only the basenames.

I'm in the process of trying to port gnutar to this version of LynxOS
but I'm beginning to think that gnutar uses a lot of routines that
aren't available on this older UNIX-like OS and the task is not going
to be trivial.  It may be easier to write a new TAR from scratch!

Does anyone know of any available source for a version of TAR that is
simpler and uses only very basic 'C' library calls, that I could port
onto this version of LynxOS?  One that puts the whole pathname into the
TAR header namefield!  I've tried a few Web and Archie searches, but
it's amazing how often the word 'tar' is used.

Any help will be appreciated, Thanks
Doug