bpo-36268: Change default tar format to pax from GNU by CAM-Gerlach · Pull Request #12355 · python/cpython (original) (raw)
Per my proposal and the resulting discussion in bpo-36268, changes tarfile.DEFAULT_FORMAT to be tarfile.PAX_FORMAT , rather than the legacy tarfile.GNU_FORMAT for Python 3.8. It also updates the docs to reflect this, explicitly passes tarfile.GNU_FORMAT in one test that assumed that tarfile.DEFAULT_FORMAT would be this, and adds an appropriate news entry (I assume this is far too trivial to be included in What's New or myself in Misc/ACKS).
This should also fix bpo-30661, and offers several other benefits, including fewer limitations, greater interoperability with POSIX-conformant implementations, increased extensibility and backward-compatibility with ustar, cross-platform portability with a standardized encoding (UTF-8) and avoidance of errors like this one.
Fix #80449