hfstar and gnutar conflicting files

Ryan Schmidt ryandesign at macports.org
Wed Jan 27 11:14:05 UTC 2021


On Jan 26, 2021, at 00:18, Richard L. Hamilton wrote:

> The following files appear to conflict (be installed by both ports):
> /opt/local/share/locale/cs/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/da/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/et/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/it/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/ja/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/ko/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/nl/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/pl/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/pt/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/pt_BR/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/ru/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/sl/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> /opt/local/share/locale/sv/LC_MESSAGES/tar.mo
> 
> 
> Moreover, neither lists the other as a conflicting port.

You should file a bug report in our issue tracker or a pull request on GitHub.


> IMO, perhaps hfstar should be patched to use "hfstar" as the program name for message lookup, and the files installed with hfstar.mo names.

The port already uses the flag --program-prefix=hfs to install the program as hfstar rather than tar, presumably to differentiate it from standard tar. Your suggestion to rename the message catalogs and to patch the program to recognize them with their new names sounds reasonable to me. The info file should probably also be renamed to match the program name.


> Or, IF they're always the same (might not be given the different version numbers, with hfstar lagging behind, and POTENTIALLY hfstar having unique messages), perhaps gnutar should be a prerequisite of hfstar.

According to its description, hfstar is "A version of gnutar for Mac OS X that supports archiving HFS+ specific information". As such, gnutar isn't a prerequisite of hfstar; hfstar is an alternative to gnutar.


> In either case, it's not serious, but at a minimum it takes a forced activate to let whichever one was updated most recently be activated (moving the conflicting files out of the way).

Definitely do not force activate. If you already did, then uninstall both and reinstall the one you want, to ensure that it is installed with files of the correct names.


> I don't know which fix is best, but IMO it's not clean as it is; either let people know in "port info", or make them coexist nicely.

It's also possible that the port should be deleted. The software has not been updated since 2002 and it is no longer mentioned on the developer's web page (except in the download directory). It is possible that the functionality it provides has already been integrated into the version of bsdtar that comes with newer versions of macOS or even the real upstream gnutar. I haven't checked but it seems unlikely to me that an 18-year-old abandoned fork of a popular open source project contains anything of value anymore.



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