[illumos-Developer] ejecting the archivers from illumos-gate

[Garrett D'Amore]

Whereas:

* there are many different archivers handing cpio, tar, pax, and
"proprietary" (or tool-specific) variants, and

* the tools themselves generally rely only upon POSIX APIs, and

* pax (the POSIX compliant tool) is currently closed source, and

* tar is itself usually replaced by GNU tar or star in distributions,
and

* integrating schily tar in illumos-gate has proven to be "unreasonably
challenging",

* GNU tar is not suitable for integration for a variety of reasons, and

* ksh93's versions of pax, tar, and cpio has been found lacking in other
respects,

I would hereby like to propose that we remove tar, pax, cpio, and even
rmt (which exists to support tar), from the illumos-gate consolidation.

I will not be putting up a replacement anywhere else, as selecting any
replacement has become unduly contentious.  Ultimately, this is a
distribution choice.  Of course, someone else is free to create a new
consolidation containing whichever of these he should happen to prefer.

I am interested in hearing any reason why illumos-gate should retain or
integrate any version of any of these tools; preferably a reason that is
based on sound technical reasons why these tools need to be part of the
ON or illumos-gate consolidations.

Understand clearly, I am interested in ditching these tools *because*
they have proven contentious, and the discussions surrounding them are
mostly toxic to any other development and to the health of our overall
community.  If someone can help me understand how this is not so, then
I'm happy to reconsider.

	- Garrett