use gtar and not tar under solaris

[Duncan Coutts]

On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 12:30 +0100, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-08-04 at 10:15 +0200, Christian Maeder wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I've just been informed that unpacking the binary (i386) solaris
> > distribution using bunzip2 and tar:
> 
> It may work better in future if you use a non-GNU tar to pack it up in
> the first place. GNU tar uses a non-standard tar format by default.
> Solaris tar would likely have more luck unpacking a POSIX/USTAR tar
> format file. It's also possible to use gnu tar to make standard tar
> format files, using --format ustar rather than gnu tar's default of
> --format gnu.

In fact I think I'd always advocate using the USTAR tar format over the
GNU tar format when distributing software, since portability is of prime
concern. This is what cabal-install does. I'd recommend ghc do it too. I
also filed a ticket for darcs dist about this some time ago.

Duncan