[Rpm-maint] [RFC][PATCH] Large file support

[Panu Matilainen]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2010, FlorianFesti wrote:

> On 03/26/2010 05:01 PM, Michael Schroeder wrote:
>> Why does it need to be incompatible? How about saving oversized files
>> in multiple parts. All but the last part would have size 0xffffffff.
>> 
>> E.g. /tmp/longfile would be archived as:
>> - cpio header size = 0xffffffff name=/tmp/longfile
>> - cpio header size = 0x123      name=/tmp/longfile.part2
>> 
>> When rpm's cpio unpack sees a file with size 0xffffffff it knows
>> that it is just a part and skips the next cpio header + filename
> May be this is just a bit too obvious...
>
> First disadvantage I can think of is that "rpm2cpio | cpio" will no longer 
> produce the file contents correctly.

Yup, which kinda misses the point IMO: its incompatible anyway, only in a 
somewhat different way. At which point it might as well be done with a new 
format that actually supports the large sizes cleanly, and probably by 
only using the large-file format when actually necessary to avoid 
unnecessary incompatibilities with 99.9% of the packages out there.

 	- Panu -