svn commit: r191235 - head/lib/libarchive

[Tim Kientzle]

Author: kientzle
Date: Sat Apr 18 03:47:29 2009
New Revision: 191235
URL: http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/191235

Log:
  Correct and update the manpage to include
  more details about some of the formats and
  to briefly describe the mtree writing capability.

Modified:
  head/lib/libarchive/libarchive-formats.5

Modified: head/lib/libarchive/libarchive-formats.5
==============================================================================
--- head/lib/libarchive/libarchive-formats.5	Sat Apr 18 03:10:28 2009	(r191234)
+++ head/lib/libarchive/libarchive-formats.5	Sat Apr 18 03:47:29 2009	(r191235)
@@ -24,8 +24,8 @@
 .\"
 .\" $FreeBSD$
 .\"
-.Dd April 27, 2004
-.Dt libarchive-formats 3
+.Dd April 17, 2009
+.Dt libarchive-formats 5
 .Os
 .Sh NAME
 .Nm libarchive-formats
@@ -93,8 +93,9 @@ to define custom keys by preceding them 
 When writing pax archives, libarchive uses many of the SCHILY keys
 defined by Joerg Schilling's
 .Dq star
-archiver.
-The libarchive library can read most of the SCHILY keys.
+archiver and a few LIBARCHIVE keys.
+The libarchive library can read most of the SCHILY keys
+and most of the GNU keys introduced by GNU tar.
 It silently ignores any keywords that it does not understand.
 .It Cm restricted pax
 The libarchive library can also write pax archives in which it
@@ -156,7 +157,8 @@ and
 format archives.
 A cpio archive stores each entry as a fixed-size header followed
 by a variable-length filename and variable-length data.
-Unlike tar, cpio does only minimal padding of the header or file data.
+Unlike the tar format, the cpio format does only minimal padding
+of the header or file data.
 There are a variety of cpio formats, which differ primarily in
 how they store the initial header: some store the values as
 octal or hexadecimal numbers in ASCII, others as binary values of
@@ -169,7 +171,12 @@ This format used 32-bit binary values fo
 and 16-bit binary values for the other fields.
 .It Cm odc
 The libarchive library can both read and write this
-POSIX-standard format.
+POSIX-standard format, which is officially known as the
+.Dq cpio interchange format
+or the
+.Dq octet-oriented cpio archive format
+and sometimes unofficially referred to as the
+.Dq old character format .
 This format stores the header contents as octal values in ASCII.
 It is standard, portable, and immune from byte-order confusion.
 File sizes and mtime are limited to 33 bits (8GB file size),
@@ -237,16 +244,24 @@ shardump archives less portable than pla
 Libarchive can read and extract from files containing ISO9660-compliant
 CDROM images.
 It also has partial support for Rockridge extensions.
-In many cases, this can remove the need to burn a physical CDROM.
+In many cases, this can remove the need to burn a physical CDROM
+just in order to read the files contained in an ISO9660 image.
 It also avoids security and complexity issues that come with
 virtual mounts and loopback devices.
 .Ss Zip format
-Libarchive can extract from most zip format archives.
+Libarchive can extract from most zip format archives, including
+jar archives, archives that use Zip64 extensions and many
+self-extracting zip archives.
 It currently only supports uncompressed entries and entries
 compressed with the
 .Dq deflate
 algorithm.
 Older zip compression algorithms are not supported.
+Libarchive reads Zip archives as they are being streamed,
+which allows it to read archives of arbitrary size.
+It currently does not use the central directory; this
+limits libarchive's ability to support some self-extracting
+archives and ones that have been modified in certain ways.
 .Ss Archive (library) file format
 The Unix archive format (commonly created by the
 .Xr ar 1
@@ -260,13 +275,32 @@ the GNU format derived from SVR4,
 and the BSD format, which first appeared in 4.4BSD.
 Libarchive provides read and write support for both variants.
 .Ss mtree
-Libarchive can read files in
+Libarchive can read and write files in
 .Xr mtree 5
-format. This format is not a true archive format, but rather a description
-of a file hierarchy. When requested, libarchive obtains the contents of
-the files described by the
+format.
+This format is not a true archive format, but rather a textual description
+of a file hierarchy in which each line specifies the name of a file and
+provides specific metadata about that file.
+Libarchive can read all of the keywords supported by both
+the NetBSD and FreeBSD versions of
+.Xr mtree 1 ,
+although many of the keywords cannot currently be stored in an
+.Tn archive_entry
+object.
+When reading, libarchive supports an extension that allows it
+to obtain the contents of the files described by the
 .Xr mtree 5
-format from files on disk instead.
+description from files on disk.
+When writing, libarchive supports use of the
+.Xr archive_write_set_options 3
+interface to specify which keywords should be included in the
+output.
+This includes the ability to compute hash entries such
+as
+.Cm sha512
+or
+.Cm md5
+from file data being written to the mtree writer.
 .Sh SEE ALSO
 .Xr ar 1 ,
 .Xr cpio 1 ,