Yes it does. You can see this being spliced into a pipe where the initrd is
created.
On Apr 5, 2014 10:24 PM, "Shea Levy" <notifications@github.com> wrote:

> In pkgs/build-support/kernel/cpio-clean.pl:
>
> > @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
> > +use strict;
> > +
> > +# Make inode number, link info and mtime consistent in order to get a consistent hash.
> > +#
> > +# Author: Alexander Kjeldaas <ak@formalprivacy.com>
> > +
> > +use Archive::Cpio;
> > +
> > +my $cpio = Archive::Cpio->new;
> > +my $IN = \*STDIN;
> > +my $ino = 1;
> > +$cpio->read_with_handler($IN, sub {
>
> It looks like the answer is yes, but to be sure: This modifies the archive
> in a streaming fashion, right?
>
> —
> Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/2128/files#r11323032>
> .
>