What's the difference between a package and a tape archive?


 
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# 1  
Old 06-15-2010
What's the difference between a package and a tape archive?

I don't really have a full understanding of packages and tape archives. They appear to be two different forms of the same thing: a way to merge multiple files into a single, larger file. Am I right in thinking this?
# 2  
Old 06-16-2010
packages deploy complex applications made of data files and executables. They install the application, sometimes with help from a special program.

tar balls on tape are just archives, they do not know how to deploy an app. If you want to install an app from tape, you have to know everything about how to do it.
# 3  
Old 06-16-2010
"package" is a generic term that can mean lots of different kinds of installer files, complex things that are used as jim describes.

A tarball on the other hand is quite specific: an archive created by the tar program, a standard UNIX utility. It's just a big dumb bundle of files, like a zip, but stores UNIX file attributes much better than zip does. Unlike zip it's designed to work linearly, so you can read the entire file, in order, extracting as you go; or create the entire file at once, beginning to end. Very handy for things that can't stop and move their heads in midstream, like tapes(or these days, sockets)... hence tape archive.

tar doesn't compress, so it's usually paired with gzip(tar -z) or bzip2(tar -j).

Last edited by Corona688; 06-16-2010 at 01:35 PM..
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