Re: [PATCH 0/3] preserve xattrs in images

[Patrick Ohly <patrick.ohly@intel.com>]

On Wed, 2015-08-12 at 09:34 -0500, Mark Hatle wrote:
> Is there something here that enables the tar-replacement-native?  Or is the user
> just expected to know they need it?

The user is supposed to ensure that it gets depended on if (and only if)
needed.

I gave the following usage instructions in the comments of the
image_types.bbclass patch:

+# By default, tar from the host is used, which can be quite old. If
+# you need special parameters (like --xattrs) which are only supported
+# by GNU tar upstream >= 1.27, then override that default:
+# IMAGE_CMD_TAR = "tar-native --xattrs --xattrs-include=*"
+# IMAGE_DEPENDS_tar_append = " tar-replacement-native"

> If you look at meta/classes/sanity.bbclass, there is already a tar check for a
> specific old version that can't handle overwriting symlinks properly.  It should
> be possible to check for the distro feature of xattr and that the host tar has
> this.  It would be good to prevent the user from having a problem early (sanity)
> rather then at filesystem generation time.

The way the patch series is intended to be used at the moment, the user
will not have a problem regardless of the host tar, because image
creation will always use a recent enough tar. It might build
tar-replacement-native unnecessarily, though.

A distro might also impose additional restrictions on the host's tar and
then will not need to be build tar-replacement-native; I haven't tried
that, because I'd still like to be compatible with Debian 7 which would
fail the requirement.

-- 
Best Regards, Patrick Ohly

The content of this message is my personal opinion only and although
I am an employee of Intel, the statements I make here in no way
represent Intel's position on the issue, nor am I authorized to speak
on behalf of Intel on this matter.