CIFS system attributes support for cpio(1), pax(1), tar(1) [PSARC/2007/459 FastTrack timeout 08/17/2007]

[James Carlson]

Joerg Schilling writes:
> 1)	Don did get the approval for adding -/ to ls(1) only because he did
> 	promise not to plan to do the same for tar(1).

I've looked over PSARC 2007/394 (which added '-/' to ls), and I can't
find any such promise.  Can you provide a citation?

> 	If we like to take Don for serious and if Don like to keep his 
> 	credibility, he should withdraw this proposal and make a new one that

Wow.  That's offensive.

First of all, this isn't Don's proposal.  The submitter (author) is
Cynthia Eastham.  Don is the sponsor.  We do like to take Don "for
serious," because he's a long-time PSARC intern and an expert in
standards compliance, but withdrawing the case needs the submitter's
consent as well.

Secondly, one of our goals here is to avoid gratuitous differences
among OpenSolaris interfaces.  That means that if we can allocate the
same option letter for ls(1), tar(1), and cp(1) for the same purpose,
then we'll do so.  This case is following multiple other cases
(2007/394, 2007/410, 2007/432) that have incrementally added -/ and -%
to various common utilities.  Thus, this one is in fact preserving
integrity among those commands by using the same option for the same
purpose.

Finally, I don't see how we're under any obligation to avoid all
possible conflicts with non-OpenSolaris command variants.  Sure, it'd
be nice if we could do so, and better still with a survey of more than
just the "shilly" commands (avoiding GNU conflicts seems more
important to me), but strict avoidance seems unlikely to happen.

If you have a concrete proposal for how these options can be added in
a coherent way, then please do provide it.  Otherwise, "no" isn't a
useful answer.

> 	is not in conflict with star(1), scpio(1) and spax(1). Note that 
> 	the pax command that Sun is currently using is closed source and if
> 	Sun is really pushing OpenSource, Sun should replace the current 
> 	pax(1) binary by a link to the OpenSource (CDDL) star(1) command.

That seems both wrong and off-topic.  We're discussing changes to the
OpenSolaris cpio(1), pax(1), and tar(1) commands, not replacement of
those commands or the licenses or availability of the source.

Those issues aren't part of architectural review.  Perhaps
opensolaris-discuss might be a better venue.

> 	I would even recommend to rethinkg _all_ other commands that did 
> 	introduce -/ recently and replace -/ by something more apropriate 
> 	to allow a unique CLI interface.

If any rethinking is done, I'd _insist_ that they all be done
together.  This piecemeal approach has been confusing at best, and
consistency is highly desirable.

That feedback has already been given to the project team, during ARC
business when we discussed 2007/432.  As this is expected to be the
last of these cases, it needn't be repeated here, but I'll do so
anyway: one case would have been better.

> 2)	The archive format for the planned feature is not documented.

There's no new archive format here.  Adding an option that uses an
existing format doesn't sound like a reason to force documentation of
what's already there.

But if the project team could supply that documentation, that might be
helpful to close the loop on 1999/209.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive         71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
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