Harald Dunkel wrote: > Many packages FTBFS (silently!) if an environment variable TAPE > is set. That happens if your rules script uses something like > > tar -c modules | bzip2 -9 > omfs.tar.bz2 > > for example. If $TAPE is set, then tar writes to $TAPE instead > of stdout (possibly corrupting the tape you had inserted).
This thread has concentrated on fixing packages, but I would appreciate a little insight into why someone might set TAPE in their environment by default. Surely if you set it by default, you must realse that you're asking any such invocation of tar to write over your tape? Why would anyone do that? It's not as if Debian packages are the only software that might run tar without -f, so even if they were all fixed, setting TAPE by default would be an incredibly risky thing to do. -- see shy jo
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