Re: [Bug-cpio] [PATCH] Add option "--reproducible" for reproducible archives

[Mario Blättermann]

Am 06.11.2014 um 16:16 schrieb Harald Hoyer:
> On 08.07.2014 11:11, Harald Hoyer wrote:
>> On 03.07.2014 12:30, address@hidden wrote:
>>> From: Harald Hoyer <address@hidden>
>>>
>>> Having the same files and directories on different locations results in
>>> different archives, because the inode numbers and devices are not the
>>> same.
>>>
>>> The "--reproducible" flag will assign increasing inode numbers to
>>> the files, resulting in equal archives for equal files and directories.
>>>
>>> A hash table is used to find already assigned inode numbers for linked
>>> files.
>>> ---
>>>  src/copyout.c | 13 ++++++++++++-
>>>  src/extern.h  |  5 +++++
>>>  src/global.c  |  3 +++
>>>  src/main.c    | 14 ++++++++++++--
>>>  src/util.c    | 60 
>>> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>  5 files changed, 92 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>>>
>>> ...
>>
>> Sergey, any comments?
>>
> 
> ping???? Is this list/maintainer alive?
> 
Seems the project itself is dead. The latest stable version has been released in
2011. Earlier this year there were some promising Git commits, but nothing
happened since then. I tried to publish my man page translations for cpio, but
got no response.

Having a look at the latest man page patch in the Rawhide package, I see:

--------------------------------------------------------------------

.SH __WARNING__
.PP
The cpio utility is considered LEGACY based on POSIX specification.  Users are
encouraged to use other archiving tools for archive creation.

If you decided to use cpio, you should almost always force cpio to use the
ustar format in copy-out mode by the -H option (cpio -o -H ustar).  This is
because the ustar format is well defined in POSIX specification and thus
readable by wide range of other archiving tools (including tar e.g.).

By default, GNU cpio uses (for historical reasons) the very old binary format
('bin') which has significant problems nowadays, e.g. with storing big inode
numbers (see the Red Hat bug #952313).

Note also that these days the modern 'pax' archive format should be considered
as the default -- but this format is not implemented in GNU cpio.  You should,
again, consider using other archivers (e.g. 'tar --format=pax').«

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The only possible way to keep cpio alive would be to fork it as a Red Hat
project, as long as our package management still needs it. As far as I can see,
it is not required directly by rpm and dnf, but by rpmlint, libguestfs and some
other RedHat/Fedora-related software.

Best Regards,
Mario