GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes.
-Copyright 1994, 1995-1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright 1994-1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+
+version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
+
+* Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
+ files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
+ option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
+
+* The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
+ and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
+
+* The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
+
+* The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
+
+* The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
+
+* The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
+
+* Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
+ The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
+
+* New language supported: da.
+
+* Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
+ If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
+
+* This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
+ Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
+
+* `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
+
+version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
+
+* `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
+* Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
+
+version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
+
+* By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
+ extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
+ before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
+ link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
+ exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
+ their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
+ longstanding security problems.
+
+ The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
+
+ For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
+ option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
+ removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
+ the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
+ extracting a new directory.
+
+* By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
+ when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
+ To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
+
+* Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g. UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
+ correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibytes.
+
+* The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
+ that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
+ locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
+ of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
+ older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
+ names have multibyte chars.
+
+* Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
+ now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
+ `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
+ colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
+ characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
+ Terminating characters (e.g. close-quote, colon, newline)
+ are also escaped as needed.
+
+* tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
+ Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
* The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
- The symbolic format (e.g. "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC" is for portability
+ The symbolic format (e.g. "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
* Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
* This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
- http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/paxutils/
+ ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
* An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
projects / chaz / tar / blobdiff