Some thoughts on enhancing cpio(1)

[Ed Gould]

In article <109 at drilex.UUCP> dricej at drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson) writes:
>
>Sam @ Deflt Consulting Corporation recently proposed several enhancements
>to cpio(1).  I think that is a very interesting area of discussion.
>I'm not sure where it leads, but it can at least be useful for persons
>modifying a system or doing a port.

One of the places it leads is backwards in time, or perhaps just
sideways to another stream.  The dump and restor programs have
always had the facility to remove files that disappeared between
the full dump and a later incremental.

Does anyone *know* why USG decided to drop dump/restor and, for
file-transfer functions, tar in favor of cpio?  This decision
was made fairly early.  PWB 1.0 had dump/restor, I don't know
about 2.0.  They were gone in 3.0, which was released external
to the (then) Bell System as "System III".

-- 
Ed Gould                    mt Xinu, 2910 Seventh St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
{ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!ed   +1 415 644 0146

"A man of quality is not threatened by a woman of equality."