Re: Binaries deployment is not easy on Linux ?

From: Jean-David Beyer (jdbeyer_at_exit109.com)
Date: 07/24/04 

Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 06:48:33 -0400

Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> "Jean-David Beyer" <jdbeyer@exit109.com> wrote in message
> news:10g3hqfghejus9a@corp.supernews.com...
>
>>Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote (in part):
>>
>>
>>>cpio is much simpler and older way to bundle up a set of files into one
>>> file. It's nowhere near as powerful as tar, but it *is* extremely
>>>small and possible to stuff into a teeny, tiny little bit of program,
>>>so it's still used by some other packages that have to run from a
>>>floppy or installation system, such as RPM itself.
>>>
>>
>>Actually tar is much older than cpio. In fact, cpio was written to
>>overcome the deficiencies of tar. Tar was originally just a band-aid on
>>the ar program that made it more suitable for writing things like magnetic
>>tapes that were very poorly handled in UNIX at the time.
>
>
> Huh. That seems possible but surprising, considering that tar has been
> vastly preferred for at least 15 years, in my experience. Mind you, GNU tar
> added a whole constellation of extremely useful features, which is why I
> keep wanting to shoot in the head modern UNIX authors who insist on using
> non-GNU versionf of that tool.
>
> Not that I think you're fibbing, but are you sure?
>
>
I am absolutely certain. I was using UNIX at Bell Labs at the time it
happened. Probably in the late 1970s, but I am not certain of the date
anymore. 

-- 
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