Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au!chook.ua.oz
From: cagney@chook.ua.oz (Andrew Cagney - aka Noid)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Source Posting Proposal, what about packaging...
Message-ID: <1284@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au>
Date: 5 Aug 90 07:14:43 GMT
References: <1990Aug4.122641.1868@math.lsa.umich.edu>
Sender: news@ucs.adelaide.edu.au
Lines: 40

From article <1990Aug4.122641.1868@math.lsa.umich.edu>, by hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu):
>>Magic-command could be something like:
>>   |modified-uud | tee posting.tar.Z | uncompress | ( cd / ; tar -xf - )
>
> Actually all you need is "cat part*" in front of the pipeline there...  }-)
> 

If you mean
	cat part* | uud | uncompress | tar -xf -
I don't like it :-(. It means that you need every part of a posting before
you can unpack it properly. I would prefer things so that I can unpack
each part separatly vis
	for p in part* ; do cat $p | uud | uncompress | tar -xf - ; done ;
If a single part went missing I can still unpack the rest. Further, the
command could be given from inside news & things can be done in smaller chunks.

The problem with the way I'm suggesting is that it is harder to package.
a more fancy version of gather being needed. (1. changed to use tar, 2. 
changed to handle subdirectories, not too hard)

>> 1. uuencoding is needed. And for more than just bitnet users
> 
> atob/btoa is more efficient, why doesn't anyone ever use it?

I don't think it is as common. A this site only MACH seems to have it :-(
However I agree it does seem to be better.

> I put together my ST upgrade kit on a NeXT machine

Hmm, I've been looking at they way you packaged your kit. I like it (bar
the need to have all the parts before you can unpack things). It leads well
to doing the entire upgrade mechanically.

While as the way I packaged things make is it easy, but tedious, for someone
doing the upgrade slowly by hand. If disk space problems are encountered
then a full back out is not needed.

Some middle ground is needed. See next posting.

						Andrew Cagney