Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!gatech!uflorida!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Unix without tar?
Message-ID: <10889@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 31 Aug 89 01:13:23 GMT
References: <JES.89Aug30102233@mbio.med.upenn.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 8

In article <JES.89Aug30102233@mbio.med.upenn.edu> jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) writes:
>Recently, someone asserted that tar archives aren't a suitable
>distribution format because they aren't understood by every Unix.

"tar" archives may not be suitable, but it's not because "tar" is
unavailable.  Every AT&T UNIX release since 7th Edition (around 1978)
has included some version of "tar"; it's "cpio" that may not exist
everywhere (particularly 4.2BSD-based systems).