-GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-09-06
+GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-09-17
Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
\f
** 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. The new checks are
-implemented via the openat, fstatat, and readlinkat calls standardized
-by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system that lacks these calls, tar
-emulates them at some cost in efficiency and reliability.
+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.
** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.