• anteaters@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    tar is just the worst shell command in existence. Why do people still bother with it?

    • PuppyOSAndCoffee@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Because it is faster to transport one big ass tar than 10k individual files, and compression is waste of time.

      • anteaters@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        I avoid it and use zip or 7z if I can. But for some crazy reason some people stil insist on using that garbage tool and I have no idea why.

        • duncesplayed@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Are zip and 7z really that much easier?

          tar cf foo.tar.xz wherever/
          zip -r foo.zip wherever/
          7z a foo.7z wherever/
          

          I get that tar needs an f for no-longer-relevant reasons whereas other tools don’t, but I never understood the meme about it beyond that. Is c for “create” really that much worse than a for “add”?

        • aard@kyu.de
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          1 year ago

          If you want to do more than just “pack this directory up just as it is” you’ll pretty quickly get to the limits of zip. tar is way more flexible about selecting partial contents and transformation on packing or extraction.

          • anteaters@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            100% of tarballs that I had to deal with were instances of “pack this directory up just as it is” because it is usually people distributing source code who insist on using tarballs.

        • PuppyOSAndCoffee@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          You do you. Compression is waste of time; storage is cheap in that you can get more, but time? Time, you never get back.

          • russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net
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            1 year ago

            Yes, and I’d rather not have my time wasted by waiting on thousands of small files transfer, rather than just compressing it and the time spent of one file transferring being much smaller.

          • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            as in time wasted transferring a highly compressible file that you didn’t bother compressing first?

            it’s only a waste of time when the file format is already compressed.

            • PuppyOSAndCoffee@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Unless you measure your baud in dial up modem, it often can take longer to compress / transport / uncompress than just transfer directly.

              • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                unless you’re picking a slow compressor that’s not true at all

                Original size | 100 GB
                Compressed size | 47.8 GB (2.091 ratio)
                Transfer speed | 1 Gbps (125 MB/s)
                Original transfer time | 100 GB / 125 MB/s = 800 seconds
                Compressed transfer time | 47.8 GB / 125 MB/s = 382.4 seconds
                
                Compressor | Snappy
                Compression ratio | 2.091 ratio
                Compression speed | 565 MB/s
                Decompression speed | 1950 MB/s
                Compression time | 100 GB / 565 MB/s = 177 seconds
                Decompression time | 47.8 GB / 1950 MB/s = 24.5 seconds
                
                Transfer time w/o compression | 800 seconds
                Transfer time with compression | 177 + 382.4 + 24.5 = 584.9 seconds
                
        • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Because everyone else does, and if everyone else does, then I must, and if I do, then everyone else must, and then everyone else does.

          Repeat loop.

            • Baut [she/her] auf.@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 year ago

              I think that’s pretty mean towards the free software developers spending their spare time on Latex and the GNU utils.
              I and many academics use Latex, and I personally am very happy to be able to use something which is plain text and FLOSS.
              I also don’t see your problems with tar; it does one thing and it does it good enough.

              • anteaters@feddit.de
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                1 year ago

                I also don’t see your problems with tar; it does one thing and it does it good enough.

                The problem is the usage of the tool which people invent different mnemonics for because it’s UX is stuck in 1986 and the only people who remember the parameters are those who use it daily.

                Similar thing for LaTeX: it’s so absurdly crusty and painful to work with it’s only used by people who have no alternative.

                //ETA
                Also, I don’t want to be mean towards the maintainers of LaTeX. I’m sorry if I made any LaTeX maintainer reading this upset or feel inferior. Working on the LaTeX code is surely no easy endeavour and people who still do that in 2023 deserve a good amount of respect.

                But everytime I had to work with LaTeX or any of its wrappers was just pure frustration at the usage and the whole project. The absolute chaos of different distributions, templates, classes and whatnot is something I never want to experience again.

    • ccunix@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You’ve never used find have you? Let’s not even get started on the config file syntax for sendmail either.