ref: 2f67e21393c25943f25e116fa6912b7d92dbca4e
dir: /sys/src/ape/cmd/pax/README/
PAX - Portable Archive Interchange Copyright (C) 1989 Mark H. Colburn All Rights Reserved. Introduction This is version 1.2 of Pax, an archiving utility. Pax is an archiving utility that reads and writes tar and cpio formats, both the traditional ones and the extended formats specified in IEEE 1003.1. It handles multi-volume archives and automatically determines the format of an archive while reading it. Three user interfaces are supported: tar, cpio, and pax. The pax interface was designed by IEEE 1003.2 as a compromise in the chronic controversy over which of tar or cpio is best. The USENIX Association provided some support for the initial implementation of this product. As a result, the Pax utility is being distributed free of charge and may be redistributed by others in either source or binary form. (See the liscensing section for restrictions) The source for Pax has been posted to comp.sources.unix on USENET and will also be available by anonymous FTP on the Internet from uunet.uu.net, moon.src.honeywell.com and from ucb-arpa.berkeley.edu. The source to Pax is also available via anonymous UUCP from jhereg.mn.org, the author's home machine and possibly other sites. The source for Pax will continue to change as long as the definition of the utility is modified by the 1003.2 working group. (For example, there are a number of changes in Draft 8 which will be incorporated as soon as Draft 8 is available). Additional modifications will be made based on user input, such as request for support of additional archive formats, etc. Patches and new releases will be made as new functionality is added or problems are diagnosed and fixed. Installation In order to install Pax, you must first edit the Makefile and the config.h file according to the directions in each of the files. These two files provide the configuration information for most commonly available machines. Please be sure to read through all the directions in each of these files before attempting to compile Pax. Portability Pax is intended to run on as many systems as possible. If you have problems getting Pax to compile or run on your system, please let me know so that the source or the installation procedure can be modified. Pax has been tested and appears to run correctly on the following machines: Machine Operating System/Release --------------------------------------------------- Altos 586 System III (2.3) AT&T UNIX PC System V.2 (Release 3.51) Convergent S/320 CTIX/68k 6.1, UNIX SysV 3.1 Cray 2 UNICOS Encore CC 02.00.r088 HP 9000 HP/UX 6.0.1 IBM PC/AT Microport SV/AT V2.4 Mac II A/UX 1.0 NCR Tower System V.2 Pyramid AT&T and Berkeley universe Sequent Symetry Dynix 3.0 SGI Iris 4D/60G UNIX 3.0 SGI Iris 4D/70G UNIX 3.0 SCO Xenix 386 2.3.2 SCO Unix 386 3.2 Sun 2 SunOS 3.4 Sun 2 SunOS 3.5 Sun 3 SunOS 3.4 Sun 3 SunOS 3.5 Sun 3 SunOS 4.0 Sun 4 SunOS 4.0 VAX 8750 BSD 4.3 (Mt. Xinu) VAX 8650 BSD 4.3 (Mt. Xinu) VAX 780 BSD 4.3 (Berkeley) --------------------------------------------------- In future releases, the source will be moving toward ANSI C and POSIX compatibility. This should allow for portability over any system supporting both ANSI and POSIX. In addition, POSIX/ANSI portability library routines will be developed which will allow the code to run on the standard machines available now. Credit Where Credit is Due Parts of the code which makes up Pax were gleaned from a number of different sources: the directory access routines in paxdir.h are modified copies of Doug Gwyn's dirent library; the regular expression matching routines in regexp.c are from Henry Spencer, some of the tar archive routines were initially written by John Gilmore for his PDTAR; and finally afio, written by Mark Brukhartz at Lachman Associates, was the basis for the buffering schemes used in pax. Licensing Copyright (c) 1989 Mark H. Colburn. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that the above copyright notice is duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed by Mark H. Colburn and sponsored by The USENIX Association. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Please report any bug or problems to: Mark Colburn Minnetech Consulting, Inc. 117 Mackubin St., Suite 1 St. Paul MN 55102 [email protected]