On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 12:30 +0100, Duncan Coutts wrote:
On Tue, 2009-08-04 at 10:15 +0200, Christian Maeder wrote:
Hi,
I've just been informed that unpacking the binary (i386) solaris distribution using bunzip2 and tar:
It may work better in future if you use a non-GNU tar to pack it up in the first place. GNU tar uses a non-standard tar format by default. Solaris tar would likely have more luck unpacking a POSIX/USTAR tar format file. It's also possible to use gnu tar to make standard tar format files, using --format ustar rather than gnu tar's default of --format gnu.
In fact I think I'd always advocate using the USTAR tar format over the GNU tar format when distributing software, since portability is of prime concern. This is what cabal-install does. I'd recommend ghc do it too. I also filed a ticket for darcs dist about this some time ago. Duncan