packaging for debian failing on large package during 'ar'

[steverweber]

trying to package a large program using fpm. I get error so used --debug-workspace --debug

Process failed: ar failed (exit code 1). Full command was:["ar", "-qc", "/root/matlab-2018a_9.4-2018a_amd64.deb", "debian-binary", "control.tar.gz", "/tmp_workdir/package-deb-build-4f3d08012a7175b9047fbfde27c7853b5ab097f260da99deb082588f96bf/data.tar.gz"] {:level=>:error, :file=>"fpm/command.rb", :line=>"505", :method=>"rescue in execute"}                                      
pl

this was not to helpful... so go deeper and run ar manually:

cd /tmp_workdir/package-deb-build-4f3d08012a7175b9047fbfde27c7853b5ab097f260da99deb082588f96bf
ar -qc "/root/matlab-2018a_9.4-2018a_amd64.deb" "debian-binary" "control.tar.gz" "/tmp_workdir/package-deb-build-4f3d08012a7175b9047fbfde27c7853b5ab097f260da99deb082588f96bf/data.tar.gz"

this gave 'friendly' error message "File too big":

ar: /root/matlab-2018a_9.4-2018a_amd64.deb: Error reading /tmp_workdir/package-deb-build-4f3d08012a7175b9047fbfde27c7853b5ab097f260da99deb082588f96bf/data.tar.gz: File too big

would be nice if this stdout/stderr was given to the user when ar fails (exit code none zero).

fyi my data.tar.gz is 9.4G so going to try to break the package into two,

[ghost]

+1

[Bug-Reaper]

Still an issue, hard to track down what the max size even is or how to workaround.

[Bug-Reaper]

deb doesn't seem to have any inherit file-size limitations (possibly ~10gib)?

ar appears to introduce artificial limits even lower (I think).

Perhaps there's a different CLI tool we can use and put it behind a flag or something so we don't break builds that depend on ar specifically (dpkg-deb || libarchive)