-GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2008-02-04
+GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-03-17
Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
\f
-version 1.19.1 (CVS)
+
+* Bugfixes.
+
+** --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.
+
+\f
+version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
+
+* Record size autodetection
+
+When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
+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
+particular warning messages during `tar' run. It takes a single
+argument (a `keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
+to affect. If the argument is prefixed with `no-', such warning
+messages are suppressed. For example,
+
+ tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
+
+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
+is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
+options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
+`--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
+the snapshot file if it exists.
+
+* Files removed during incremental dumps
+
+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 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 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 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:
+
+ 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:
+
+ 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
+ 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
+ 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
+
+* Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
+
+* New option -I
+
+The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
+--use-compress-program.
+
+* The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
+
+\f
+version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
+
+* New short option -J
+
+A shortcut for --lzma.
+
+* New option --lzop
+
+* New option --no-auto-compress
+
+Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
+
+* New option --no-null
+
+Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
+
+* Compressed format recognition
+
+If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
+back to using archive suffix to determine it.
+
+* VCS support.
+
+Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
+Mercurial and Darcs.
+
+* Transformation scope flags
+
+Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
+control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
+
+ - r
+ Apply transformation to regular archive members.
+
+ - s
+ Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
+
+ - h
+ Apply transformation to hard link targets.
+
+Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
+`H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
+
+The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
+e.g.:
+
+ tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
+
+Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
+both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
+links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
+can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
+
+ tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
+
+* Bugfixes
+
+** 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.
+
+\f
+
+version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
* New option --auto-compress (-a)
This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
-echo=string, 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.
+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.
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.
* New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
(Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
- The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
+ The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
* Bug fixes.
but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
\f
-Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
+Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
Sensitive matters
* Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
\f
-Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
+Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
* Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
* The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
\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