Dear experts, I'm interested in whether publishing _AM_PROG_TAR in tar.m4 for general use is a considerable idea, or bad idea. In my understanding, _AM_PROG_TAR is designed to help "make dist" of Automake target, and it is not for general use. There are some source packages whose top-level makefile is not managed by autoconf/automake and write their own "make dist" recipes. One example is FreeType. Currently it is hardcoding "tar --format=ustar -chf -", like:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/freetype/freetype/-/blob/master/builds/toplevel.mk?ref_type=heads I hope its portability can be improved by something like _AM_PROG_TAR. It is not so difficult to reimplenetation of _AM_PROG_TAR in each software project, but if automake can consider publishising _AM_PROG_TAR, the maintenance would be easier. Regards, mpsuzuki
