On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 03:35:25PM +0000, sin wrote: > I think this is probably the best course of action > at this point. > ... > Support for character and block devices is optional in POSIX. > We cannot guarantee that this will work correctly and it is not > portable, so just drop support for it in tar(1).
I'm not sure I agree. We shouldn't be tethered to POSIX if it means losing useful functionality for no practical reason. Are there any systems out there that don't have support for character and block devices? Haiku isn't a compelling argument to me. In any case, I prefer the #ifdef solution. #ifdefs are dangerous, but I see nothing wrong with how you used them here. Nick
