> This, and the incorrect dates, are errors promulgated by Wikipedia [...] which was probably the source of these errors in the article. Always double-check what Wikipedia says on computing topics with a proper reference.
I didn't use Wikipedia, actually. The primary source was the libarchive documentation, star, bits of GNU tar's docs, and POSIX. The main issue is that it's hard to get a copy of POSIX.1-1988, let alone POSIX drafts from the 1990s.
EDIT: Also, I didn't actually notice there was a rationale section in POSIX.1-2001 which references PAX as existing in earlier standards. I will read through it and update my article accordingly. Thank you!
> Of particular note, given this article, is Rahul Dhesi's ZOO file format from 1986.
Funnily enough, I have heard of ZOO (not sure where) and looked into it. While it does support file versions (and deletion) and has many improvements over tar, there are many other properties it doesn't have that we'd need (and last I checked there's no real support for it in modern Linux and Unix-likes -- so it makes no difference from a ubiquity perspective).
> But really the basic error here is in using an off-line archive format for an on-line live filesystem mechanism.
We don't use tar archives as the live filesystem for containers, it's used as a distribution mechanism.
> from deduplication (c.f. ZFS)
While ZFS has de-duplication, it's not really the kind we need and (from memory) zfs-send doesn't include the de-dup tables so they're all generated on the receiving end. Ideally we'd want content-defined de-duplication because that way you can reproducibly generate the blobs.
I didn't use Wikipedia, actually. The primary source was the libarchive documentation, star, bits of GNU tar's docs, and POSIX. The main issue is that it's hard to get a copy of POSIX.1-1988, let alone POSIX drafts from the 1990s.
EDIT: Also, I didn't actually notice there was a rationale section in POSIX.1-2001 which references PAX as existing in earlier standards. I will read through it and update my article accordingly. Thank you!
> Of particular note, given this article, is Rahul Dhesi's ZOO file format from 1986.
Funnily enough, I have heard of ZOO (not sure where) and looked into it. While it does support file versions (and deletion) and has many improvements over tar, there are many other properties it doesn't have that we'd need (and last I checked there's no real support for it in modern Linux and Unix-likes -- so it makes no difference from a ubiquity perspective).
> But really the basic error here is in using an off-line archive format for an on-line live filesystem mechanism.
We don't use tar archives as the live filesystem for containers, it's used as a distribution mechanism.
> from deduplication (c.f. ZFS)
While ZFS has de-duplication, it's not really the kind we need and (from memory) zfs-send doesn't include the de-dup tables so they're all generated on the receiving end. Ideally we'd want content-defined de-duplication because that way you can reproducibly generate the blobs.