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I learned at one point that posix doesn't include tar, and instead has an archiving tool called "pax". I haven't seen references to pax outside of this discover

I learned at one point that posix doesn't include tar, and instead has an archiving tool called "pax". I haven't seen references to pax outside of this discovery, and indeed many systems don't even include pax. If posix can't even include such a prototypically unix tool as tar, then how can it claim to standardize the open variant of unix systems?

kazinator 3y ago
I think the issue is that they tried, but couldn't, due to differences in tar. So they came up with pax. This is because they wanted a format that is interoperable among implementations. However, I think there are two mistakes in the process: 1. Why should it matter that there are different flavors of tar out there which have interoperability issues? The command and some of its options could be standardized, as having an implementation-defined format. The ecosystem of POSIX-like systems will solve the interoperability problem. 2. Why consider the matter closed for so many decades; maybe the issue should be revisited? There should be an effort to have tar as a standard command, given that it's widely used. The only reason we have POSIX in the first place is that Unix is widely implemented and used. I mean, different file systems have totally different inode data structures, right? Yet we have a standard commands that manipulate things in the file system, like ls. What your system can ls, another one might not be able to mount at all.