cpio vs. tar

[Jeffrey A Law]

  In message < m0xSkoa-0000NmC@student.ecok.edu >you write:
  > Hmm.  At the risk of generating a lot of flying pieces, how about
  > just including GNU cpio (or GNU tar) with the compiler in the first place ?
The distribution is already quite large -- adding more stuff to it
just to "support" the compiler tools is something I'd like to shy
away from.

Contrast this to including texinfo, which allowed us to remove the
.info files.  The net result was a (slighly) smaller distribution.

It's easier just to deal with tar & cpio.  Every system of note has
one or the other.

Systems that don't have tar/cpio likley have many other more serious
problems :-)

jeff