Re: tar -cvfX save.tar foo ./dirtosave/..

From: Peter T. Breuer (ptb_at_oboe.it.uc3m.es)
Date: 08/30/03 

Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2003 12:56:15 +0200

In comp.os.linux.misc Joerg Schilling <js@cs.tu-berlin.de> wrote:
> In article <38hmib.jgg.ln@news.it.uc3m.es>,
> Peter T. Breuer <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:

>>>>4) Can someone track down the history of the POSIX specs that Joerg
>>>> holds up as examples of GNU's failure? Specifically, can someone
>>>> identify when they exited the draft phase and became official? (I
>>>> am not too worried about this point, though, as GNU tar itself
>>>> gives credence to certain specs by saying "we're not compatible
>>>> with them yet".)
>>
>>> I did write it many times and it is easy to prove: the oldest final
>>> version is from 1988. So this is before GNU started to make GNU tar
>>> from PD tar and before GNU tar introduced non POSIX things.
>>
>>Except that gnu tar existed before then. I believe that I was using it
>>in about 1985 or 1986 and that it was already old then. (the current
>>gnu source has a changefile that begins in 1996-09-04, which is
>>interesting - 1996-09-04 Francois Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca> *
>>ChangeLog, Makefile.am, pretest.in, version.sh: New files. *
>>checktar.sh, genfile.c: New files, moved from src/. A regression test
>>is an old dream for GNU tar. Reported by Tom Tromey and Robert
>>Bernstein).

> Nice Try!

I'm simply recalling what happened to the best of my memory. In 1985,
1986 or thereabouts, I finished a phd and took a research fellowship in
computer science - there I got shared time on a big vax running unix,
and saw unix for the first time. I stood that for a few months, then
moved back home and took a research post in software engineering. In
that post I took delivery at once of a sun 360m for myself (I wrote a
couple of languages in C under sunOS 4.something), and also started
assembling a net of suns as the research councils started giving them to
new starts. I met the djd C compiler about then, as I investigated
getting a personal computer for myself. At that time I also began to
encounter software coming from what I think was the early gnu, and to
install it. Now I ask you what it was packaged in!

> Do you really expect anybody to believe your fairy tales?

Yep.

> It is a well known fact that GNU tar started in 1989 by modifying the source
> from a program called "SUG-tar / PD-tar".

Then reconsider your well-known facts. I can believe that the era was
1986-1989, but whether it was the beginning of that era or the end, I
don't know. What I do know is that was when I held that fellowship in that
place and when I did such and such things with such and such computers and
operating systems. In 1989 I moved institution and then definitely was
encountering unixes for PCs (I recall the coherent commercial offering,
and writing a proper shell for it) and I no longer recall their
packaging methods. But gzip was definitely around by then as we were
all switching from using unix compress to gzip instead at the new place.
And the g in gzip?

> This program first has been published as "SUG-tar" December 7th 1987 at SUG
> conference in SanJose and (to a limited audience) as "PD-tar" in Februar 1987.

> If you tell us that you did use this program before, you like to tell us that
> you are "John Gilmore"......

I simply tell you what I recall. I may be a year or so off, but then so
may you.

> You just verified yourself as being completely nonserious.

I wish you would look up "verify" in a dictionary! What you mean is
"gave corroborating evidence for". Not "verify". What you are saying
is not what you are thinking you are saying.

Peter

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