[Bug 1785291] Re: tar --xattr and --xattr-include=* should be defaults

[Balint Reczey]

** Bug watch added: GNU Savannah Bug Tracker #56287
   http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?56287

** Also affects: tar via
   http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?56287
   Importance: Unknown
       Status: Unknown

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Title:
  tar --xattr and --xattr-include=* should be defaults

Status in GNU tar:
  Unknown
Status in tar package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  As discussed at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-
  devel/2018-August/040407.html ff, as of Ubuntu 18.04 an Ubuntu root
  filesystem uses xattrs for storing filesystem capabilities.  We should
  therefore have defaults for our tar that preserve these attributes
  without needing to pass additional commandline options.

  Currently when creating a tarball you must pass the non-default option
  --xattrs and when extracting a tarball you must pass the non-default
  option --xattrs-include=*.

  The latter is particularly awkward, and Colin Watson found some
  version of tar documentation that suggests --xattrs-include=* should
  never be needed, only --xattrs.  But that doesn't appear in the
  version of tar(1) in bionic, and in practice --xattrs-include=* is
  definitely required.

  Ideally we want this changed in upstream tar as well since we can't
  rely on users using the Ubuntu build of tar to unpack their Ubuntu
  filesystems; but even without this we should change the default in
  Ubuntu to take the sharp edges off for our users where possible.

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