[vlc-devel] [PATCH v2] Sort tar file list

[Bernhard M. Wiedemann]

> Is the "ustar" format guaranteed to work all the time ?
> Maybe you can split in two parts and add this extra flag separately ?

I'd say: yes.
It is supported by both bsdtar and GNU tar.
Solaris tar seems to not have a --format but also no --group

The ustar format comes with some limitations compared to the newer
(default) pax format.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_(computing)#UStar_format
I think, none of those really matter in this context:

> all three time stamps of a file in arbitrary resolution (most implementations use nanosecond granularity)
> path names of unlimited length and character set coding
> symlink target names of unlimited length and character set coding
> user and group names of unlimited length and character set coding
> files with unlimited size (the historic tar format is 8 GB)
> userid and groupid without size limitation (this historic tar format was is limited to a max. id of 2097151)
> a character set definition for path names and user/group names