On 21.08.2025 10:01, Fangrui Song wrote: > On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 11:38 PM Jan Beulich <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On 21.08.2025 04:50, Guillem Jover wrote: >>> As you probably know the deb 2.x packaging format [D] is based on an >>> ar container, with tar members for its format definition, control >>> metadata and filesystem data payloads (among others). >>> >>> A problem that has been known for a while now [S], is that the ar format >>> has a file size limit, which means the deb format is thus limited to >>> filesystem payloads (usually compressed) of at most around 9536.74 MiB. >>> >>> This is starting to become an issue, and it's something that has been >>> bothering me for a bit, because support for a new deb format should be >>> ready way before we need it, as older tools should ideally be able to >>> handle it. And there are multiple tools involved that will need to be >>> updated [T]. >> >> Hasn't there been an extension to cover that for many years, using >> "!<arch64>\n" >> as file signature? I do not know, however, for well formalized that >> extension is, >> which solely differs from traditional archives by having a 20-byte size >> field (in >> place of the 10-byte one). > > Is there an !<arch64>\n extension?
15 or more years ago, when I came across this, I didn't write down its origin. It may be a Windows world extension. > I can't find !<arch64>\n in > binutils, libarchive, FreeBSD's elftoolchain, or LLVM. Right, that's what may need adding there. Or whatever else extension we may want to use. Jan
