[Duplicity-talk] Re: Help me replace tar!

[Joerg Schilling]

>Hi, I think the next step in the evolution of duplicity may be to come
>up with a better file format than tar.  I have listed a few problems
>with tar and a few suggestions at:

>http://www.nongnu.org/duplicity/new_format.html


I don't believe that this is a good idea as there is a very good and infinitely 
expandable standard for archives: TAR.

Of course, looking at GNU tar and believing this is TAR may give a bad 
impression. GNU tar is not TAR..... it's far away from the standard :-(


Star is very close to the standard. In fact, it is the TAR implementation that
AFAIK is closest to the standard.

THE way to go for an archiver is to use the extensible POSIX.1-2001 format.
Star is the first tar implementation for the POSIX.1-2001 tar format aka. PAX.
During the last two years, star did add a lot of features based on POSIX.1-2001
extensions. This allows star to implement things that other tar implementations
cannot do.

Star implementa ACL support, extended file flags, Extended attribute files,
support for any file type, multi volume support and True Incremental Dumps.

In the future, there will be a star based backup that is not worse in any 
specific feature compared to ufsdump/ufsrestore. This will include a compact 
full directory at the beginning of the tape...

Starting a few months ago, star added first support for true incremental dumps.
Yesterday, I found that ReiserFS does not update st_ctime with a rename(2)
operation, so I implemented a feature planned for the next year. This does even
makes the incremental restore algorithm much simpler. I expect the first 
incremental restore implementation in about two weeks.


If you like to have a look at star, check star-1.5a31 at

ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/alpha/

You may also like to check the archive format documentation

http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling/private/star.html
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling/private/man/star.4.html

Jörg

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