1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2007-09-29
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
7 * New option --exclude-vcs
9 Excludes directories and files, internal to some widely used version
10 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
12 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
14 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
22 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
24 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
25 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
26 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
29 * Fix --version output.
31 * Recognition of broken archives.
33 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
34 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
35 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
36 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
38 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
41 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
43 * Licensed under the GPLv3
45 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
48 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
50 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
51 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
53 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
54 a full dump when both options were given.
56 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
57 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
59 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
61 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
62 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
63 option affects hard link targets as well.
65 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
66 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
69 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
71 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
72 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
75 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
76 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
77 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
78 still added to the archive.
80 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
81 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
82 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
83 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
84 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
85 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
86 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
88 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
89 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
90 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
93 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
95 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
96 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
97 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
99 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
100 members during creation.
103 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
104 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
105 the listing to stderr.
108 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
110 * Incompatible changes
114 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
115 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
119 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
120 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
121 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
122 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
123 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
126 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
127 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
128 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
130 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
131 following command line options:
133 --wildcards use wildcards
134 --anchored patterns match file name start
135 --ignore-case ignore case
136 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
138 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
139 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
141 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
142 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
143 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
145 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
146 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
148 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
149 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
150 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
151 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
153 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
155 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
156 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
160 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
161 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
162 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
164 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
166 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
168 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
169 versions it worked only with --extract.
171 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
172 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
173 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
174 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
175 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
176 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
178 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
179 as well as that about directories.
181 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
182 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
183 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
186 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
187 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
188 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
189 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
190 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
193 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
196 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
200 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
201 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
202 including another -T option.
203 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
204 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
205 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
206 dash, use the --add-file option.
208 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
209 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
211 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
212 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
213 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
215 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
216 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
217 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
220 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
221 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
223 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
224 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
225 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
226 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
228 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
231 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
232 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
235 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
236 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
237 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
238 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
239 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
241 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
242 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
244 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
245 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
246 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
247 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
248 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
249 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
250 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
252 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
253 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
254 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
255 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
257 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
258 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
259 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
260 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
262 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
263 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
264 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
268 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
269 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
270 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
271 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
272 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
273 was not processed correctly.
274 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
276 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
277 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
279 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
280 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
281 (for ustar and v7 formats).
282 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
283 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
284 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
285 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
289 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
291 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
292 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
295 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
297 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
298 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
299 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
301 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
302 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
305 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
306 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
307 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
308 back up. This change fixes the bug.
310 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
313 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
316 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
317 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
319 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
320 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
322 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
323 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
324 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
326 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
328 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
329 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
330 introduced in version 1.14
332 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
333 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
334 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
335 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
336 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
339 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
340 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
341 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
342 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
343 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
344 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
345 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
346 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
347 extracted copy in such cases.
348 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
349 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
350 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
351 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
352 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
353 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
354 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
357 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
359 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
360 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
361 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
362 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
363 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
364 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
365 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
367 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
368 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
369 the previous default behavior.
371 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
372 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
373 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
374 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
377 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
378 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
379 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
380 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
381 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
383 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
384 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
385 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
386 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
387 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
388 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
389 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
391 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
392 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
395 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
396 individual files, as well as on directories.
398 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
399 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
400 option is given to configure.
402 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
403 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
404 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
405 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
406 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
407 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
408 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
409 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
410 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
412 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
413 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
416 * Removed obsolete command line options:
417 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
418 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
419 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
420 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
421 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
422 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
423 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
425 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
426 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
427 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
428 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
433 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
438 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
440 * New option --overwrite-dir.
441 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
442 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
445 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
447 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
450 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
455 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
457 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
460 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
462 * Some bugs were fixed:
464 - hard links to symbolic links
466 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
468 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
469 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
470 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
471 exclude patterns are interpreted.
473 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
474 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
475 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
476 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
477 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
478 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
479 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
480 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
482 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
483 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
484 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
487 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
489 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
490 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
492 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
493 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
496 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
498 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
499 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
500 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
502 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
503 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
505 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
507 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
509 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
511 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
513 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
514 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
516 * New language supported: da.
518 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
519 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
521 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
522 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
524 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
527 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
529 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
530 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
533 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
535 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
536 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
537 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
538 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
539 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
540 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
541 longstanding security problems.
543 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
545 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
546 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
547 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
548 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
549 extracting a new directory.
551 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
552 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
553 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
555 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
556 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
558 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
559 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
560 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
561 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
562 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
563 names have multibyte chars.
565 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
566 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
567 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
568 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
569 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
570 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
571 are also escaped as needed.
573 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
574 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
577 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
579 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
580 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
583 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
585 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
586 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
587 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
590 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
592 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
593 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
594 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
595 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
598 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
600 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
602 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
604 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
606 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
607 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
608 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
609 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
610 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
611 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
612 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
613 and which rejects large files.
615 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
616 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
617 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
618 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
620 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
621 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
622 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
624 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
626 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
629 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
631 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
632 for compatibility with paxutils.
634 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
635 if no explicit operands were given.
637 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
638 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
639 even if they begin with `-'.
641 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
642 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
643 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
644 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
645 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
646 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
649 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
651 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
652 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
653 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
656 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
658 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
659 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
661 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
664 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
665 numeric header field.
668 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
670 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
671 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
672 the original file or directory.
675 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
677 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
679 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
680 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
682 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
685 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
687 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
688 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
689 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
691 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
692 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
693 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
694 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
695 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
696 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
698 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
699 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
700 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
701 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
703 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
704 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
705 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
707 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
709 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
712 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
714 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
717 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
719 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
720 this matches historical practice.
723 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
725 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
726 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
727 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
730 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
732 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
735 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
739 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
741 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
742 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
743 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
744 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
745 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
746 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
747 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
748 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
749 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
750 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
751 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
753 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
756 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
757 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
760 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
761 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
762 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
763 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
766 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
767 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
768 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
769 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
770 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
771 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
774 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
775 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
776 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
777 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
778 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
779 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
780 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
781 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
782 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
785 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
786 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
787 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
788 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
789 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
790 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
791 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
792 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
794 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
796 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
798 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
799 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
800 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
801 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
802 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
804 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
806 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
808 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
809 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
810 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
813 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
815 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
817 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
818 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
819 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
820 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
822 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
824 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
826 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
829 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
831 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
833 * Several Makefile cleanups.
835 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
839 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
840 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
841 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
842 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
843 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
847 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
849 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
850 for it will eventually be removed.
852 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
853 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
855 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
856 after they are added to the archive.
858 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
861 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
862 is being read or written.
864 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
865 omitted from the archive.
867 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
868 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
870 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
871 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
873 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
874 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
875 around to the beginning.
877 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
878 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
879 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
881 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
882 their original values after dumping the file.
884 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
887 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
888 modification and access times.
890 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
891 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
892 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
895 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
897 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
898 +newer-mtime work right.
900 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
902 * Sparse files now work correctly.
904 * +volume is now called +label.
906 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
907 what +exclude used to do.
909 * Exit status is now correct.
911 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
913 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
915 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
916 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
917 point instead of waiting for a write error.
919 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
920 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
921 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
922 all our backups at the FSF.
924 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
925 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
926 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
928 * See ChangeLog for more details.
932 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
933 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
935 This file is part of GNU tar.
937 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
938 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
939 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
942 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
943 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
944 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
945 GNU General Public License for more details.
947 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
948 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
949 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
950 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
954 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
955 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
956 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
957 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"