Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!usc!ginosko!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!cornell!ken
From: ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.isis
Subject: TAR problems with symbolic links
Message-ID: <33064@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 11 Oct 89 16:41:11 GMT
Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP
Reply-To: ken@cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
Lines: 34

I got the following message to isis-bugs@cs.cornell.edu:

From: mustard@sdrc.UU.NET (Sandy Mustard)
> I just pulled a copy of ISIS 1.3 from uunet and have a question concerning
> the results of my un'tar'ing it on my system.  It seems that in the 
> isis1.3/include directory, all the .h files have no length. Can I assume 
> that the copy on uunet is correct or should I get a copy from somewhere else?

The UUNET copy of ISIS is current, and matches the one on cu-arpa.  I
think the problem is not with the TAR file but with the tar program.
All the files in the include directory are symbolic links, so my guess
is that TAR was unable to recreate such links for some reason on your 
version of UNIX.  I have seen this before, although it isn't normal.  
Perhaps your version of tar wants a special option and otherwise
won't create such links?

The easiest solution is to just remake the links.  For example, the
ones in the include directory can be recreated by the command:

	cd include; rm *
	ln -s ../*/*.h .

I had hoped to include a list of all the symbolic links that TAR
should have created, but it is a bit long.  You can generate it 
easily, though, by running:
	tar tf ISIS.TAR | grep symbolic
You should see something like this:
    isisv1.3/AIX/clib/makefile symbolic link to ../../clib/makefile
    isisv1.3/AIX/demos/make_grid symbolic link to ../../demos/make_grid
    ... etc ...
I suggest that you make a list like this and turn it into a shell script 
that will recreate the links needed.

Ken