[lug] [OT] archive formats

[Paul E Condon]

On Wed, Mar 29, 2006 at 07:43:26AM -0700, Bear Giles wrote:
> Collins Richey wrote:
> 
> >On 3/28/06, Daniel Webb <lists at danielwebb.us> wrote:
> > 
> >
> >>I'm still a bit shocked that Windows doesn't even recognize what tar
> >>is, but I shouldn't be.
> >>
> >>Now why, pray tell, would you expect Windows to recognize a *nix file 
> >>format?
> >>   
> >>
> Now why, pray tell, would you call tar a "unix" file format?
> 
> It's an archive format, nothing more.   A simple one at that, one 
> designed to be easily implemented on any system.  The headers have a few 
> fields that Windows doesn't use, but which it can safely ignore.
> 
> (So what is a "unix" file format?  ELF files (executables and shared 
> libraries) might count, but I thought that they are general enough that 
> they can be used on non-Unix systems.  That's the only thing that occurs 
> to me at the moment.)
> 

Within the broad area of computer software there are a few sub-regions 
of differing intellectural tradition. The VAX/VMS operating system comes
from a different idea space than does OS/360. They have different ways of
organaizing I/O and different ways of talking about data files. Among
those differing traditions, Unix is special in that it has survived the
demise of its corporate sponsors. Why it has survived can be argued on
many levels, but part of the reason is that Unix people have always had
a special interest in extending the reach of their good ideas into other
traditions. Other traditions have tended to avoid letting outsiders use
their good ideas without buying their products. 

So tar is a Unix idea IMHO. It has become so embedded in the minds of
computer people that they forget where it came from, or perhaps, they
forget that the whole world is not Unix. The reason OS/X has tar is
that it came with the BSD Unix package when they created Darwin, not
because it was specially implemented for Apple.

Windows will have tar when Microsoft gives up on maintaining its own
proprietary OS and cadges a version of Unix to supply infrastructure
for the Windows GUI, as was done by Apple.  (When will that be? ;-)

-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon at mesanetworks.net