+
+version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
+
+* New option --auto-compress (-a)
+
+With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
+of the archive file name.
+
+* New option --lzma
+
+Selects LZMA compression algorithm
+
+* New option --hard-dereference
+
+During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
+they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
+
+* New option --checkpoint-action
+
+This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
+checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
+echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
+of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
+executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
+chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
+
+* New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
+
+The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
+preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
+creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
+LVM snapshot).
+
+The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
+the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
+`--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
+environment variable.
+
+* The --transform option.
+
+Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
+The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
+
+The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
+expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
+
+Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
+during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
+during extraction.
+
+For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
+Names".
+
+* Info (end-of-volume) scripts
+
+The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
+checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
+
+* Incremental archives
+
+Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
+
+* Bugfixes.
+** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
+archives.
+
+\f
+version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
+
+* New option --exclude-vcs
+
+Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
+control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
+
+* --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
+
+The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
+
+ --exclude-caches
+ --exclude-caches-all
+ --exclude-tag
+ --exclude-tag-all
+ --exclude-tag-under
+
+* Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
+
+Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
+records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
+contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
+settings.
+
+* Fix --version output.
+
+* Recognition of broken archives.
+
+When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
+-t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
+code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
+'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
+
+* Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
+
+* Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
+
+\f
+version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
+
+* Licensed under the GPLv3
+
+* Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
+
+\f
+version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
+
+* Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
+ sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
+
+* Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
+ a full dump when both options were given.
+
+* Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
+ even though all requested members has already been extracted.
+
+* Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
+
+In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
+option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
+option affects hard link targets as well.
+
+* End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
+ it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
+
+\f
+version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
+
+* New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
+ files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
+ be archived.
+
+* The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
+ CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
+ directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
+ still added to the archive.
+
+* Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
+ This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
+ Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
+ <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
+ We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
+ records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
+ decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
+
+* Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
+ files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
+ running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
+
+\f
+version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
+
+* After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
+changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
+error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
+
+* New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
+members during creation.
+
+* Bug fixes
+** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
+** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
+the listing to stderr.
+
+\f
+version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
+
+* Incompatible changes
+
+** Globbing
+
+Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
+extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
+
+ tar xf foo.tar '*.c'
+
+would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
+was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
+implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
+no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
+is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
+named '*.c'.
+
+To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
+If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
+add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
+
+The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
+following command line options:
+
+ --wildcards use wildcards
+ --anchored patterns match file name start
+ --ignore-case ignore case
+ --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
+
+Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
+effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
+
+These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
+command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
+and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
+
+ 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
+ 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
+
+The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
+changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
+to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
+case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
+
+ tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
+
+** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
+with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.