On 2021-05-22 at 06:46:45, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Đoàn Trần Công Danh  <congdanhqx@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > Despite that tar is available everywhere, it's not required by POSIX.
> > And, we're allow users to specify which tar they want to use in Makefile
> 
> s/we're/we/;
> 
> > knobs, and we prefer GNU tar in autotools script.
> 
> The last part I didn't know about---it is sad if autotools require
> use of gtar (but since use of autoconf and autotools is not required
> to build Git, I do not deeply care ;-)).

I don't believe we do require it.  macOS ships bsdtar (that is, the one
from libarchive) and to the best of my knowledge, everything works fine
there.

I suspect the reason that gtar is preferred is because on some systems,
the tar(1) command is relatively incapable and doesn't support things
like POSIX tar archives or pax extensions.
-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Houston, Texas, US