[kwlug-disc] So why not tar -cf tarball.tar a.xz b.xz c.xz, instead of tar -cJf tarball.tar.xz a b c ?

[William Park]

- It's easier to compress one file than lots of little ones
- Whether you add compressed or uncompressed files to tarball,
  "integrity" of tarball is the same.
- It's easier to extract file verbatim than do post-processing
  individually.
-- 
William

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 10:06:34AM -0400, B.S. wrote:
> By itself, tar has no individual file integrity (checksumming) ability -
> albeit the entire tarball itself is checksummed when used, as traditionally,
> with compressors such as gzip.
> 
> I've read that tarballs can be fragile. And when damaged, there's no way to
> know which files remain undamaged. [Yet tar is the only archiver kept
> current with filesystems enhancements, such as ACLs, xattr, links, pipes,
> devices, etc.. Zip (also an archive) isn't, nor gzip, et al.]
> 
> Yes, md5's would also confirm integrity - while adding awkwardness and
> sidecar files to also track and validate.
> 
> So why is tar'ring gzip's instead of gzip'ping tarballs not more popular?
> [Google-fu fail.] Yes, it won't compress as much, but that seems a small
> price to pay for individual file integrity assurance.
> 
> 
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