1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2014-02-14
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
7 * New checkpoint action: totals
9 The --checkpoint-action=totals option instructs tar to output the
10 total number of bytes transferred at each checkpoint.
12 * Extended checkpoint format specification.
14 New conversion specifiers are implemented. Some of them take
15 optional arguments, supplied in curly braces between the percent
16 sign and the specifier letter.
18 %d - Number of seconds since tar started.
19 %{r,w,d}T - I/O totals; optional arguments supply prefixes
20 to be used before number of bytes read, written and
21 deleted, correspondingly.
22 %{FMT}t - Current local time using FMT as strftime(3) format.
23 If {FMT} is omitted, use %c.
24 %{N}* - Pad output with spaces to the Nth column, or to the
25 current screen width, if {N} is not given.
26 %c - A shortcut for "%{%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}t: %ds, %{read,wrote}T%*\r"
28 * New option --one-top-level
30 The option --one-top-level tells tar to extract all files into a
31 subdirectory named by the base name of the archive (minus standard
32 compression suffixes recognizable by --auto-compress). When used with
33 an argument, as in --one-top-level=DIR, the files are extracted into the
34 supplied DIRectory. This ensures that no archive members are
35 extracted outside of the specified directory, even if the archive is
36 crafted so as to put them elsewhere.
40 The --sort=ORDER option instructs tar to sort directory entries
41 according to ORDER. It takes effect when creating archives.
42 Available ORDERs are: none (the default), name and inode. The
43 latter may be absent, if the underlying system does not provide
44 the necessary information.
46 Using --sort=name ensures the member ordering in the created archive
47 is uniform and reproducible. Using --sort=inode reduces the number
48 of disk seeks made when creating the archive and thus can considerably
53 This release includes official tar(1) and rmt(8) manpages.
54 Distribution maintainers are kindly asked to use these instead of the
55 home-made pages they provided so far.
58 version 1.27.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-11-17
62 * Fix unquoting of file names obtained via the -T option.
64 * Fix GNU long link header timestamp (backward compatibility).
66 * Fix extracting sparse members from star archives.
69 version 1.27 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-10-05
73 ** Sparse files with large data
75 When creating a PAX-format archive, tar no longer arbitrarily restricts
76 the size of the representation of a sparse file to be less than 8 GiB.
80 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
81 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
82 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
83 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
85 * --owner and --group names and numbers
87 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
88 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
89 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
90 present in the current host's user and group databases.
92 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
94 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
95 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
96 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
97 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
98 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
100 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
101 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
102 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
103 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
104 together with this option.
106 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
108 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
109 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
110 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
111 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
112 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
113 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
114 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
117 * Passing command line arguments to external commands.
119 Any option taking a command name as its argument now accepts a full
120 command line as well. Thus, it is now possible to pass additional
121 arguments to invoked programs. The affected options are:
123 --checkpoint-action=exec
124 -I, --use-compress-program
128 Furthermore, if any additional information is supplied to such a
129 command via environment variables, these variables can now be used in
130 the command line itself. Care should be taken to escape them, to
131 prevent from being expanded too early, for example:
133 tar -x -f a.tar --info-script='changevol $TAR_ARCHIVE $TAR_VOLUME'
135 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
137 * New warning control option --warning=[no-]record-size
139 On extraction, this option controls whether to display actual record
140 size, if it differs from the default.
142 * New command line option --keep-directory-symlink
144 By default, if trying to extract a directory from the archive,
145 tar discovers that the corresponding file name already exists and is a
146 symbolic link, it first unlinks the entry, and then extracts the directory.
148 This option disables this behavior and instructs tar to follow
149 symlinks to directories when extracting from the archive.
151 It is mainly intended to provide compatibility with the Slackware
152 installation scripts.
155 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
159 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
161 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
163 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
165 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
168 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
170 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
172 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
173 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
176 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
178 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
179 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
180 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
182 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
183 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
184 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
186 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
188 * Improve the testsuite.
190 * Alternative decompression programs.
192 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
193 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
194 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
196 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
198 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
199 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
201 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
204 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
206 * The --full-time option.
208 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
209 time stamps to the full resolution.
213 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
215 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
216 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
217 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
218 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
219 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
220 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
222 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
223 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
224 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
225 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
227 ** Symbolic link attributes
229 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
230 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
231 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
232 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
235 ** --dereference consistency
237 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
238 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
239 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
240 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
241 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
242 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
243 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
244 the implementation was not consistent.
246 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
247 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
248 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
251 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
253 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
254 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
255 invoked as in the example below:
257 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
261 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
262 symlinks to another files within that directory.
264 ** --test-label behavior
266 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
267 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
269 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
272 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
274 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
276 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
277 matches the actual volume label.
279 ** --label used with --update
281 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
282 update of an archive:
284 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
286 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
288 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
290 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
291 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
293 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
296 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
298 * Record size autodetection
300 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
301 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
302 to regular files and pipes).
306 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
307 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
309 * New command line option '--warning'
311 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
312 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
313 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
314 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
315 messages are suppressed. For example,
317 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
319 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
320 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
322 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
325 * New command line option '--level'
327 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
328 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
329 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
330 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
331 the snapshot file if it exists.
333 * Files removed during incremental dumps
335 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
336 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
337 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
338 during file system scan.
340 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
341 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
344 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
345 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
346 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
347 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
348 is issued and exit code remains 0.
350 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
352 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
353 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
354 can be overridden by the
356 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
358 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
359 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
361 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
362 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
364 This can be overridden by the
366 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
368 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
369 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
371 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
373 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
374 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
375 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
376 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
377 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
378 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
380 * Environment of --to-command script.
382 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
383 the following variables:
385 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
386 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
387 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
388 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
389 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
392 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
393 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
394 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
395 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
396 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
397 succesfully stored in the archive.
398 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
399 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
401 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
404 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
406 * Support for xz compression
408 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
410 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
411 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
412 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
413 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
415 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
417 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
418 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
419 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
421 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
425 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
426 --use-compress-program.
428 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
431 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
433 * New short option -J
435 A shortcut for --lzma.
439 * New option --no-auto-compress
441 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
443 * New option --no-null
445 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
447 * Compressed format recognition
449 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
450 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
454 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
457 * Transformation scope flags
459 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
460 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
463 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
466 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
469 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
471 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
472 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
474 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
477 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
479 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
480 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
481 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
482 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
484 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
488 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
490 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
491 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
492 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
493 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
497 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
499 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
501 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
502 of the archive file name.
506 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
508 * New option --hard-dereference
510 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
511 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
513 * New option --checkpoint-action
515 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
516 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
517 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
518 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
519 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
520 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
522 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
524 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
525 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
526 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
529 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
530 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
531 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
532 environment variable.
534 * The --transform option.
536 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
537 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
539 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
540 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
542 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
543 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
546 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
549 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
551 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
552 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
554 * Incremental archives
556 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
559 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
563 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
565 * New option --exclude-vcs
567 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
568 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
570 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
572 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
580 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
582 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
583 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
584 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
587 * Fix --version output.
589 * Recognition of broken archives.
591 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
592 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
593 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
594 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
596 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
598 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
601 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
603 * Licensed under the GPLv3
605 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
608 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
610 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
611 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
613 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
614 a full dump when both options were given.
616 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
617 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
619 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
621 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
622 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
623 option affects hard link targets as well.
625 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
626 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
629 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
631 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
632 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
635 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
636 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
637 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
638 still added to the archive.
640 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
641 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
642 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
643 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
644 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
645 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
646 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
648 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
649 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
650 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
653 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
655 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
656 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
657 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
659 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
660 members during creation.
663 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
664 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
665 the listing to stderr.
668 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
670 * Incompatible changes
674 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
675 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
679 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
680 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
681 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
682 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
683 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
686 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
687 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
688 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
690 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
691 following command line options:
693 --wildcards use wildcards
694 --anchored patterns match file name start
695 --ignore-case ignore case
696 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
698 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
699 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
701 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
702 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
703 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
705 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
706 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
708 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
709 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
710 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
711 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
713 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
715 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
716 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
720 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
721 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
722 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
724 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
726 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
728 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
729 versions it worked only with --extract.
731 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
732 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
733 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
734 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
735 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
736 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
738 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
739 as well as that about directories.
741 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
742 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
743 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
746 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
747 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
748 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
749 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
750 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
753 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
756 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
760 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
761 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
762 including another -T option.
763 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
764 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
765 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
766 dash, use the --add-file option.
768 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
769 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
771 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
772 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
773 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
775 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
776 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
777 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
780 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
781 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
783 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
784 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
785 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
786 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
788 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
791 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
792 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
795 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
796 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
797 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
798 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
799 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
801 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
802 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
804 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
805 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
806 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
807 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
808 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
809 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
810 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
812 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
813 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
814 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
815 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
817 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
818 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
819 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
820 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
822 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
823 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
824 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
828 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
829 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
830 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
831 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
832 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
833 was not processed correctly.
834 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
836 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
837 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
839 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
840 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
841 (for ustar and v7 formats).
842 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
843 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
844 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
845 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
849 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
851 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
852 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
855 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
857 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
858 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
859 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
861 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
862 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
865 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
866 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
867 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
868 back up. This change fixes the bug.
870 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
873 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
876 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
877 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
879 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
880 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
882 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
883 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
884 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
886 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
888 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
889 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
890 introduced in version 1.14
892 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
893 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
894 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
895 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
896 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
899 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
900 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
901 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
902 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
903 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
904 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
905 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
906 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
907 extracted copy in such cases.
908 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
909 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
910 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
911 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
912 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
913 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
914 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
917 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
919 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
920 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
921 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
922 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
923 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
924 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
925 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
927 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
928 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
929 the previous default behavior.
931 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
932 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
933 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
934 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
937 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
938 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
939 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
940 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
941 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
943 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
944 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
945 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
946 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
947 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
948 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
949 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
951 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
952 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
955 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
956 individual files, as well as on directories.
958 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
959 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
960 option is given to configure.
962 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
963 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
964 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
965 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
966 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
967 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
968 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
969 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
970 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
972 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
973 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
976 * Removed obsolete command line options:
977 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
978 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
979 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
980 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
981 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
982 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
983 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
985 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
986 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
987 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
988 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
993 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
998 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
1000 * New option --overwrite-dir.
1001 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
1002 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
1005 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
1007 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
1010 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
1015 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
1017 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
1020 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
1022 * Some bugs were fixed:
1024 - hard links to symbolic links
1026 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
1028 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
1029 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
1030 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
1031 exclude patterns are interpreted.
1033 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
1034 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
1035 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
1036 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
1037 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
1038 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
1039 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
1040 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
1042 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
1043 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
1044 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
1047 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
1049 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
1050 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
1052 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
1053 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
1056 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
1058 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
1059 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
1060 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
1062 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
1063 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
1065 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
1067 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
1069 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
1071 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
1073 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
1074 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
1076 * New language supported: da.
1078 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
1079 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
1081 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
1082 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
1084 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
1087 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
1089 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
1090 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
1093 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
1095 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
1096 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
1097 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
1098 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
1099 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
1100 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
1101 longstanding security problems.
1103 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
1105 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1106 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1107 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1108 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1109 extracting a new directory.
1111 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1112 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1113 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1115 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1116 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1118 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1119 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1120 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1121 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1122 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1123 names have multibyte chars.
1125 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1126 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1127 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1128 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1129 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1130 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1131 are also escaped as needed.
1133 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1134 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1137 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1139 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1140 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1143 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1145 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1146 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1147 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1150 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1152 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1153 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1154 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1155 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1158 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1160 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1162 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1164 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1166 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1167 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1168 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1169 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1170 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1171 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1172 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1173 and which rejects large files.
1175 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1176 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1177 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1178 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1180 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1181 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1182 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1184 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1186 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1189 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1191 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1192 for compatibility with paxutils.
1194 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1195 if no explicit operands were given.
1197 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1198 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1199 even if they begin with '-'.
1201 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1202 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1203 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1204 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1205 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1206 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1209 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1211 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1212 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1213 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1216 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1218 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1219 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1221 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1224 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1225 numeric header field.
1228 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1230 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1231 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1232 the original file or directory.
1235 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1237 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1239 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1240 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1242 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1245 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1247 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1248 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1249 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1251 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1252 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1253 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1254 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1255 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1256 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1258 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1259 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1260 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1261 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1263 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1264 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1265 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1267 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1269 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1272 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1274 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1277 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1279 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1280 this matches historical practice.
1283 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1285 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1286 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1287 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1290 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1292 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1295 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1299 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1301 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1302 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1303 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1304 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1305 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1306 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1307 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1308 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1309 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1310 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1311 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1313 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1316 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1317 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1320 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1321 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1322 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1323 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1326 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1327 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1328 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1329 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1330 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1331 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1334 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1335 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1336 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1337 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1338 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1339 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1340 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1341 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1342 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1345 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1346 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1347 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1348 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1349 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1350 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1351 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1352 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1354 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1356 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1358 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1359 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1360 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1361 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1362 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1364 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1366 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1368 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1369 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1370 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1373 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1375 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1377 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1378 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1379 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1380 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1382 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1384 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1386 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1389 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1391 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1393 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1395 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1399 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1400 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1401 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1402 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1403 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1407 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1409 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1410 for it will eventually be removed.
1412 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1413 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1415 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1416 after they are added to the archive.
1418 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1421 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1422 is being read or written.
1424 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1425 omitted from the archive.
1427 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1428 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1430 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1431 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1433 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1434 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1435 around to the beginning.
1437 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1438 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1439 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1441 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1442 their original values after dumping the file.
1444 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1447 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1448 modification and access times.
1450 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1451 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1452 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1455 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1457 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1458 +newer-mtime work right.
1460 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1462 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1464 * +volume is now called +label.
1466 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1467 what +exclude used to do.
1469 * Exit status is now correct.
1471 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1473 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1475 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1476 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1477 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1479 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1480 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1481 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1482 all our backups at the FSF.
1484 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1485 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1486 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1488 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1492 Copyright 1994-2001, 2003-2010, 2013-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1494 This file is part of GNU tar.
1496 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1497 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1498 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
1499 (at your option) any later version.
1501 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1502 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1503 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1504 GNU General Public License for more details.
1506 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1507 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1511 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1512 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1513 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1514 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1515 time-stamp-end: "\n"