(tar)MSDOS

Why maintaining

Support

MSDOS and other systems?
------------------------

   GNU does not necessarily support non-UNIX systems, that is to say,
MSDOS is not supported.  It is very true that ports can sometimes be
very intrusive in the sources, cluttering them significantly with
conditionals and extra code, and distract GNU maintainers from the main
development line.

   However, a special argument might be made for `tar'.  Both `tar' and
`gzip' are the required tools for getting something out of the GNU
archives, `tar' should be more opened to ports than the GNU rule
states.  Jean-loup did a tremendous job at porting `gzip' on smaller
systems.  It would be comfortable that a few other GNU tools be
available on MSDOS and others, among which `tar'.  These ports for
`tar' have theoretically no priority at all.  Nevertheless, a port is
interesting, because `tar' is so central in GNU distributions, and
`gzip' is already ported.

   Some porting efforts have been done in the past.  There are traces of
a few exchanges on this subject in `BACKLOG'.  GNU `tar' sources have
been modified a lot recently at a cosmetic level, and I would certainly
have a hard time integrating diffs provided by someone else.  If people
want porting `tar' to MSDOS or other non-UNIX systems, they should be
committed in supporting their ports after the fact, as I cannot do it
myself.