-GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-09-13
+GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-09-23
Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
\f
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. The new checks are implemented via
-the openat, dirfd, fdopendir, fstatat, and readlinkat calls
+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