[Python-Dev] Adding Optik to 2.3 standard library

[Martin v. Loewis]

akuchlin@mems-exchange.org writes:

> cpio is a program like tar, that reads tar files in addition to its
> own format.  Unfortunately there are a bunch of different cpio
> formats; see the GNU manpage for cpio for a list.

The recent Posix release deprecates the cpio(1) utility, and replaces
it with the pax(1) utility. By default, pax writes the ustar format,
but with enhanced features taken from cpio. In addition, it fixes bugs
in both formats, e.g. by introducing the notion of character sets and
Unicode for file names in tar files.

As for accessing rpm: Redhat's rpm module does that, which is part of
the standard RPM distribution. Of course, it is a C extension, using
the RPM library.

Regards,
Martin