-GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2009-08-08
+GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2011-08-13
Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
\f
-version 1.22.90 (Git)
+version ?.? - ?, 201?-??-??
+
+* New features
+
+** --owner and --group names and numbers
+
+The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
+NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
+for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
+present in the current host's user and group databases.
+
+version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
+
+* Bugfixes
+
+** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
+
+** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
+
+** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
+
+tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
+zero-sized files.
+
+** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
+
+** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
+
+When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
+top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
+
+\f
+version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
+
+* Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
+* Fix extraction of device nodes.
+* Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
+
+Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
+so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
+impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
+
+* Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
+
+* Improve the testsuite.
+
+* Alternative decompression programs.
+
+If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
+compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
+are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
+
+ 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
+ compression format.
+ 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
+ line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
+
+For example, if `compress' is not available, tar will try `gzip'.
+
+\f
+version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
+
+* The --full-time option.
+
+New command line option `--full-time' instructs tar to output file
+time stamps to the full resolution.
+
+* Bugfixes.
+
+** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
+
+Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
+modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
+maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
+file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
+the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
+a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
+
+The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
+standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
+not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
+some cost in efficiency and reliability.
+
+** Symbolic link attributes
+
+When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
+last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
+supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
+support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
+symlink permissions.
+
+** --dereference consistency
+
+The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
+into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
+if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
+also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
+itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
+that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
+--dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
+the implementation was not consistent.
+
+Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
+files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
+files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
+always followed.
+
+** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
+
+When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
+"write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
+invoked as in the example below:
+
+ tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
+
+** --remove-files
+
+`Tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
+symlinks to another files within that directory.
+
+** --test-label behavior
+
+In case of a mismatch, `tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
+not 2 as it did in previous versions.
+
+The `--verbose' option used with `--test-label' provides additional
+diagnostics.
+
+Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
+
+ tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
+
+In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
+matches the actual volume label.
+
+** --label used with --update
+
+The `--label' option can be used with `--update' to prevent accidental
+update of an archive:
+
+ tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
+
+This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
+
+** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
+
+Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
+-L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
+
+** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
+
+\f
+version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
* Record size autodetection
reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
to regular files and pipes).
+* Seekable archives
+
+When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
+on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
+
* New command line option `--warning'
The `--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
suppresses the output of `A lone zero block' diagnostics, which is
normally issued if `archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
+See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
+detailed discussion.
+
* New command line option `--level'
The `--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
-was explicitly listed in the command line, or was gathered
+was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
during file system scan.
If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
fatal error.
-Otherwise, if the file was gathered during the file system
-scan, tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
-and sets the exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
+Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
+tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
+and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
-is issued and the exit code remains 0.
+is issued and exit code remains 0.
+
+* Modification times of PAX extended headers.
+
+Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
+are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
+can be overridden by the
+
+ --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
+
+command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
+the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
+
+Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
+headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
+
+This can be overridden by the
+
+ --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
+
+command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
+the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
+
+* Time references in --pax-option argument.
+
+Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
+of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
+braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
+chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
+an existing file, starting with `/' or `.'. In the latter
+case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
+
+* Environment of --to-command script.
+
+The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
+the following variables:
+
+ TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
+ TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
+ TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
+ TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
+ TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
* Bugfixes
** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
+** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
+succesfully stored in the archive.
+** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
+** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
+format).
+** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
\f
version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
* Support for xz compression
-Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
+Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
auto-compress option (-a) is used.
-Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
+Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
1. The option --xz or -J is used.
2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
- s
Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
- - h
+ - h
Apply transformation to hard link targets.
Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
is fixed.
-** Fixed record size autodetection. If detected record size differs from
-the expected value (either default, or set on the command line), tar
-always prints a warning if verbosity level is set to 1 or greater,
-i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
+** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
+the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
+command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
+to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
\f
during extraction.
For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
-Names".
+Names".
* Info (end-of-volume) scripts
The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
- --exclude-caches
- --exclude-caches-all
+ --exclude-caches
+ --exclude-caches-all
--exclude-tag
--exclude-tag-all
--exclude-tag-under
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:
+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 '/.'.
\f
Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
-2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This file is part of GNU tar.
projects / chaz / tar / blobdiff