HEADS UP: tar -l is now (intentionally) broken.

[David G. Lawrence]

> # kientzle at freebsd.org / 2004-08-02 22:55:45 -0700:
> > Since POSIX and GNU violently disagree about the
> > meaning of "tar -l", and there seem to be strong
> > adherents to both interpretations, I'm preparing to
> > commit a patch that breaks "tar -l" for everyone:
>  
>     All I can see is three posts in current@, that's
>     not much of a discussion (or voting).
> 
>     I for one, would prefer POSIX compliance. :)

   Well, '-l' has meant "local filesystem only" in FreeBSD since the 1.0
release (i.e. since the beginning - more than 10 years now). FreeBSD isn't
a POSIX OS - it's a BSD OS and we have many differences in our user
environment that differ from POSIX. That's partly what makes us BSD rather
than System V, Solaris, or Linux. Many of our users prefer the way that ps(1)
works in BSD, for example...as well as many other non-POSIXisms in other
utilities.
   Since I personally trashed a destination filesystem because the new tar
didn't do the right thing, I *know* there will be many other unsuspecting
FreeBSD users that will have a similary distasteful experience with such
a completely different behavior of '-l'.

-DG

David G. Lawrence
President
Download Technologies, Inc. - http://www.downloadtech.com - (866) 399 8500
TeraSolutions, Inc. - http://www.terasolutions.com - (888) 346 7175
The FreeBSD Project - http://www.freebsd.org
Pave the road of life with opportunities.