Re: Standard OS X Compression format
Re: Standard OS X Compression format
- Subject: Re: Standard OS X Compression format
- From: Marcel Weiher <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 21:34:28 +0100
On Tuesday, November 20, 2001, at 06:58 PM, Markus Hitter wrote:
Am Dienstag den, 20. November 2001, um 13:54, schrieb Marcel Weiher:
._foo is treated specially only by (a) Carbon ...
... as Carbon is the only API (still) using Resource forks. For Cocoa
and Finder Info I'm not too sure where to draw the border.
... when (b) accessing files on a non-forked file system.
which currently is every filesystem supported by Darwin / OS X, except
HFS(+).
Except that HFS+ is the default file format, and there is no need for
anything like hfstar or hfspax anyway for non-HFS filesystems.
Anyway: the point is that at the level that hfstar and hfspax operate,
._foo is not special at all.
._foo is not special at all to Darwin!
Because Darwin doesn't make any use of resource forks. Does it?
No it doesn't. That is the point: the resource-fork emulation is
handled at higher levels by some compatibility libraries. Should a tar
program also upgrade project builder projects? Or convert WO 4.5
projects to WO 5? Word documents to RTF? Yes, it might be nice, but it
sure isn't something an archiver should do (or rather: attempt, because
all such conversions aren't 100% safe).
On the Darwin 1.3.1 Install disk I couldn't find a single file with a
resource fork size > 0.
Yup.
Well, last time I tried, an archive packed with hfstar core dumped
gnutar on IRIX when trying to unpackage the thing.
Hmm, I can't find the bug-report that you surely must have sent...can
you resend?
You guess it: I were too lazy to figure out wether to bug gnutar,
hfstar or IRIX.
A heads-up would have been nice.
My conclusion was: hfstar is pretty useless for all non-HFS file
systems, anyway.
Well, it is just as useful or useless as gnutar.
At least all the additions to hfstar over gnutar.
Certainly! Since the only reason for hfstar's existence is support for
HFS+ filesystems, there is no point in using it for non HFS+
filesystems: gnutar does everything you need. In fact, the best case
would probably be if the patches were put back into the gnutar
mainstream release and hfstar ceased to exist as a separate entity (or
Apple removed the forked filesystem...)
On HFS+, it works great.
Good to hear.
Error messages that report errors: trying to unpack resource forks
and finder info on a filesystem that does not support these features...
You might consider not to include empty resource forks
Good suggestion. Just implemented it.
and non-default finder info.
Hmm. not entirely sure what the default is, but it seems that everything
can be zero and is for 'plain' files, so I guess I will treat that as
the default. Implemented.
Marcel
--
Marcel Weiher Metaobject Software Technologies
email@hidden www.metaobject.com
Metaprogramming for the Graphic Arts. HOM, IDEAs, MetaAd etc.