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Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:45:34 -0700
From: Tim Kientzle <kientzle@freebsd.org>
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To: Roman Divacky <rdivacky@freebsd.org>
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Cc: cvs-src@freebsd.org, src-committers@freebsd.org, cvs-all@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/usr.bin/cpio Makefile bsdcpio.1 cmdline.c
 config_freebsd.h
 cpio.c cpio.h cpio_platform.h err.c matching.c matching.h pathmatch.c
 pathmatch.h
 src/usr.bin/cpio/test Makefile main.c test.h test_0.c test_basic.c
 test_format_newc.c ...
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Roman Divacky wrote:
>>  Initial commit of bsdcpio 0.9.11b.
> 
> great! thnx a lot.
> 
> can you please summarize what are the advantages/differences from gnu-cpio?

Colin summarized the key point, which is simply that this cpio
is built on a large base of common code in the form of libarchive.
Hopefully, complex issues that are common to many kinds of
archiving tools can be dealt with once in libarchive, rather
than separately in each tool.

Being built on libarchive, bsdcpio does automatically gain
a lot of convenient features:
   * Full support for gzip/bzip2 compression, including
     automatic format detection on read.
   * Extensive format support beyond what GNU cpio offers
     (Read: ISO, zip, pax; Write: pax, shar)

Of course, GNU cpio is a mature and battle-tested piece of
software that offers a lot that bsdcpio does not:
   * Nearly 20 years of development effort
   * RMT support
   * Supports some older cpio variants that libarchive
     doesn't yet support
   * Many scripts and tools have been built around
     GNU cpio that might break with bsdcpio

Of course, I do intend to address these issues as time
permits.  The initial set of options for bsdcpio were
gleaned by surveying ports files; I'm hopeful that I've
covered the most-used features and that bsdcpio will be
useful to most people in its current state.

Cheers,

Tim Kientzle