Re: default tar format for "make dist" and patch file length

[Ludovic Courtès]

Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> skribis:

> Ideally, "guix lint" would be run and issues fixed before applying
> patches ... !

On the bright side, that there’s just a dozen of issues on 20K packages
suggests it’s usually run.  :-)

I think we’re used to running it for new packages but not when modifying
an existing package, which is probably when issues like that are
introduced.

> Is it worth adding an inexpensive check to etc/git/pre-push that also
> checks for file-length and fails to push due to this issue potentially
> breaking "make dist"?

Could be.

> A different angle might be to actually use a different tar format:
>
>   https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_section/Formats.html
>
> I would guess "make dist" is using the tar "v7" format, based on the 99
> character length limit for files. Most of the other formats have no file
> length limit or a longer limit.

Yes, we could also do that.

Thanks,
Ludo’.