Validate broken on OS X

[Simon Marlow]

On 19/11/2009 23:17, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:
> Roman Leshchinskiy:
>> On 19/11/2009, at 23:57, Ian Lynagh wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 09:58:17PM +1100, Roman Leshchinskiy wrote:
>>>> cd a/b/c/&&  /usr/bin/tar --force-local -jxf ../../../../bindistprep/ghc-6.13.20091119-i386-apple-darwin.tar.bz2
>>>> tar: Option --force-local is not supported
>>>> Usage:
>>>> List:    tar -tf<archive-filename>
>>>> Extract: tar -xf<archive-filename>
>>>> Create:  tar -cf<archive-filename>  [filenames...]
>>>> Help:    tar --help
>>>> make: *** [all] Error 1
>>>
>>> What version of OS X is this?
>>
>> Ah. I've upgraded to Snow Leopard. It turns out that in Snow Leopard tar is bsdtar which is a change from Leopard which had tar = gnutar. But /usr/bin/gnutar still exists so I guess we should just have configure pick that one. I'm a bit surprised that I'm the first one to trip over this, Manuel has been validating on Snow Leopard for quite some time now. Manuel, doesn't this happen for you?
>
> I am rarely validating on my laptop, but usually use our Xserve (which is much faster), which still runs Leopard.  I guess that is why I didn't tip over it.
>
> Do we really have to rely on a specific version of tar?  Dependencies like that always come back to bite you.

It sounds like the --force-local option is required iff tar is GNU tar. 
  So we should have a configure test for that.

Cheers,
	Simon