[Bug 240146] 'man cp' does not discuss extended attributes; it really should since even -p discards them!

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https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=240146

Conrad Meyer <cem at freebsd.org> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |cem at freebsd.org
             Status|New                         |Open

--- Comment #1 from Conrad Meyer <cem at freebsd.org> ---
Yeah, it's unfortunate!  Totally agree we should at a minimum document the gap.

cp(1) is an old tool and long predates extended attributes in FreeBSD.

FWIW, POSIX 1003.1-2017 cp(1) also does not mention extattrs at all:

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/cp.html

GNU cp only touches on it obliquely:

http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/cp.1.html

>       -a, --archive
>              same as -dR --preserve=all
...                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>       -p     same as --preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps
>
>       --preserve[=ATTR_LIST]
>              preserve the specified attributes (default:
>              mode,ownership,timestamps), if possible additional attributes:
>              context, links, xattr, all
                               ^^^^^

(And note that even GNU cp's bare '-p' option does NOT preserve extattrs; you
need to pass '-a'.)

So this is a valid doc bug, but could also be filed as a Base system / bin bug
to add the missing support.

As a workaround, tar(1) can be used to copy extended attributes (--xattrs).

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