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Options to control option handling in file lists.
[chaz/tar] / NEWS
1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2015-08-03
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
3
4 \f
5 version 1.28.90 (Git)
6
7 * New options: --verbatim-files-from, --no-verbatim-files-from
8
9 The --verbatim-files-from option instructs tar to treat each line read
10 from a file list as a file name, even if it starts with a dash.
11
12 File lists are supplied with the --files-from (-T) option. By
13 default, each line read from a file list is first stripped off the
14 leading and trailing whitespace and, if the result begins with a dash,
15 it is treated as tar command line option.
16
17 Use the --verbatim-files-from option to disable this special handling.
18 This facilitates the use of tar with file lists created automatically
19 (e.g. by file(1) command).
20
21 This option affects all --files-from options that occur after it in
22 the command line. Its effect is reverted by the
23 --no-verbatim-files-from option.
24
25 * --null option reads file names verbatim
26
27 The --null option implies --verbatim-files-from. I.e. each line
28 read from null-delimited file lists is treated as a file name.
29
30 This restores the documented behavior, which was broken in version
31 1.27.
32
33 \f
34 version 1.28, 2014-07-28
35
36 * New checkpoint action: totals
37
38 The --checkpoint-action=totals option instructs tar to output the
39 total number of bytes transferred at each checkpoint.
40
41 * Extended checkpoint format specification.
42
43 New conversion specifiers are implemented. Some of them take
44 optional arguments, supplied in curly braces between the percent
45 sign and the specifier letter.
46
47 %d - Number of seconds since tar started.
48 %{r,w,d}T - I/O totals; optional arguments supply prefixes
49 to be used before number of bytes read, written and
50 deleted, correspondingly.
51 %{FMT}t - Current local time using FMT as strftime(3) format.
52 If {FMT} is omitted, use %c.
53 %{N}* - Pad output with spaces to the Nth column, or to the
54 current screen width, if {N} is not given.
55 %c - A shortcut for "%{%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}t: %ds, %{read,wrote}T%*\r"
56
57 * New option --one-top-level
58
59 The option --one-top-level tells tar to extract all files into a
60 subdirectory named by the base name of the archive (minus standard
61 compression suffixes recognizable by --auto-compress). When used with
62 an argument, as in --one-top-level=DIR, the files are extracted into the
63 supplied DIRectory. This ensures that no archive members are
64 extracted outside of the specified directory, even if the archive is
65 crafted so as to put them elsewhere.
66
67 * New option --sort
68
69 The --sort=ORDER option instructs tar to sort directory entries
70 according to ORDER. It takes effect when creating archives.
71 Available ORDERs are: none (the default), name and inode. The
72 latter may be absent, if the underlying system does not provide
73 the necessary information.
74
75 Using --sort=name ensures the member ordering in the created archive
76 is uniform and reproducible. Using --sort=inode reduces the number
77 of disk seeks made when creating the archive and thus can considerably
78 speed up archivation.
79
80 * New exclusion options
81
82 --exclude-ignore=FILE Before dumping a directory check if it
83 contains FILE, and if so read exclude
84 patterns for this directory from FILE.
85 --exclude-ignore-recursive=FILE
86 Same as above, but the exclusion patterns
87 read from FILE remain in effect for any
88 subdirectory, recursively.
89 --exclude-vcs-ignores Read exclude tags from VCS ignore files,
90 where such files exist. Supported VCS's
91 are: CVS, Git, Bazaar, Mercurial.
92
93
94 * Tar refuses to read input from and write output to a tty device.
95
96 * Manpages
97
98 This release includes official tar(1) and rmt(8) manpages.
99 Distribution maintainers are kindly asked to use these instead of the
100 home-made pages they have been providing so far.
101
102 \f
103 version 1.27.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-11-17
104
105 * Bug fixes
106
107 * Fix unquoting of file names obtained via the -T option.
108
109 * Fix GNU long link header timestamp (backward compatibility).
110
111 * Fix extracting sparse members from star archives.
112
113 \f
114 version 1.27 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-10-05
115
116 * Bug fixes
117
118 ** Sparse files with large data
119
120 When creating a PAX-format archive, tar no longer arbitrarily restricts
121 the size of the representation of a sparse file to be less than 8 GiB.
122
123 * Quoting
124
125 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
126 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
127 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
128 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
129
130 * --owner and --group names and numbers
131
132 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
133 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
134 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
135 present in the current host's user and group databases.
136
137 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
138
139 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
140 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
141 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
142 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
143 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
144
145 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
146 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
147 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
148 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
149 together with this option.
150
151 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
152
153 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
154 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
155 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
156 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
157 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
158 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
159 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
160 extended attributes.
161
162 * Passing command line arguments to external commands.
163
164 Any option taking a command name as its argument now accepts a full
165 command line as well. Thus, it is now possible to pass additional
166 arguments to invoked programs. The affected options are:
167
168 --checkpoint-action=exec
169 -I, --use-compress-program
170 -F, --info-script
171 --to-command
172
173 Furthermore, if any additional information is supplied to such a
174 command via environment variables, these variables can now be used in
175 the command line itself. Care should be taken to escape them, to
176 prevent from being expanded too early, for example:
177
178 tar -x -f a.tar --info-script='changevol $TAR_ARCHIVE $TAR_VOLUME'
179
180 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
181
182 * New warning control option --warning=[no-]record-size
183
184 On extraction, this option controls whether to display actual record
185 size, if it differs from the default.
186
187 * New command line option --keep-directory-symlink
188
189 By default, if trying to extract a directory from the archive,
190 tar discovers that the corresponding file name already exists and is a
191 symbolic link, it first unlinks the entry, and then extracts the directory.
192
193 This option disables this behavior and instructs tar to follow
194 symlinks to directories when extracting from the archive.
195
196 It is mainly intended to provide compatibility with the Slackware
197 installation scripts.
198
199 \f
200 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
201
202 * Bugfixes
203
204 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
205
206 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
207
208 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
209
210 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
211 zero-sized files.
212
213 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
214
215 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
216
217 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
218 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
219
220 \f
221 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
222
223 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
224 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
225 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
226
227 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
228 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
229 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
230
231 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
232
233 * Improve the testsuite.
234
235 * Alternative decompression programs.
236
237 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
238 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
239 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
240
241 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
242 compression format.
243 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
244 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
245
246 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
247
248 \f
249 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
250
251 * The --full-time option.
252
253 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
254 time stamps to the full resolution.
255
256 * Bugfixes.
257
258 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
259
260 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
261 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
262 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
263 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
264 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
265 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
266
267 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
268 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
269 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
270 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
271
272 ** Symbolic link attributes
273
274 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
275 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
276 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
277 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
278 symlink permissions.
279
280 ** --dereference consistency
281
282 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
283 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
284 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
285 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
286 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
287 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
288 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
289 the implementation was not consistent.
290
291 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
292 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
293 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
294 always followed.
295
296 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
297
298 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
299 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
300 invoked as in the example below:
301
302 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
303
304 ** --remove-files
305
306 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
307 symlinks to another files within that directory.
308
309 ** --test-label behavior
310
311 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
312 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
313
314 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
315 diagnostics.
316
317 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
318
319 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
320
321 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
322 matches the actual volume label.
323
324 ** --label used with --update
325
326 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
327 update of an archive:
328
329 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
330
331 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
332
333 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
334
335 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
336 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
337
338 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
339
340 \f
341 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
342
343 * Record size autodetection
344
345 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
346 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
347 to regular files and pipes).
348
349 * Seekable archives
350
351 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
352 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
353
354 * New command line option '--warning'
355
356 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
357 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
358 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
359 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
360 messages are suppressed. For example,
361
362 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
363
364 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
365 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
366
367 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
368 detailed discussion.
369
370 * New command line option '--level'
371
372 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
373 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
374 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
375 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
376 the snapshot file if it exists.
377
378 * Files removed during incremental dumps
379
380 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
381 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
382 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
383 during file system scan.
384
385 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
386 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
387 fatal error.
388
389 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
390 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
391 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
392 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
393 is issued and exit code remains 0.
394
395 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
396
397 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
398 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
399 can be overridden by the
400
401 --pax-option='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
402
403 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
404 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
405
406 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
407 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
408
409 This can be overridden by the
410
411 --pax-option='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
412
413 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
414 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
415
416 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
417
418 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
419 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
420 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
421 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
422 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
423 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
424
425 * Environment of --to-command script.
426
427 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
428 the following variables:
429
430 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
431 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
432 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
433 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
434 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
435
436 * Bugfixes
437 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
438 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
439 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
440 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
441 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
442 succesfully stored in the archive.
443 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
444 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
445 format).
446 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
447
448 \f
449 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
450
451 * Support for xz compression
452
453 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
454
455 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
456 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
457 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
458 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
459
460 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
461
462 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
463 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
464 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
465
466 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
467
468 * New option -I
469
470 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
471 --use-compress-program.
472
473 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
474
475 \f
476 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
477
478 * New short option -J
479
480 A shortcut for --lzma.
481
482 * New option --lzop
483
484 * New option --no-auto-compress
485
486 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
487
488 * New option --no-null
489
490 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
491
492 * Compressed format recognition
493
494 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
495 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
496
497 * VCS support.
498
499 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
500 Mercurial and Darcs.
501
502 * Transformation scope flags
503
504 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
505 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
506
507 - r
508 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
509
510 - s
511 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
512
513 - h
514 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
515
516 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
517 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
518
519 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
520 e.g.:
521
522 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
523
524 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
525 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
526 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
527 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
528
529 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
530
531 * Bugfixes
532
533 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
534 is fixed.
535 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
536 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
537 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
538 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
539
540 \f
541
542 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
543
544 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
545
546 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
547 of the archive file name.
548
549 * New option --lzma
550
551 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
552
553 * New option --hard-dereference
554
555 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
556 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
557
558 * New option --checkpoint-action
559
560 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
561 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
562 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
563 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
564 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
565 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
566
567 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
568
569 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
570 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
571 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
572 LVM snapshot).
573
574 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
575 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
576 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
577 environment variable.
578
579 * The --transform option.
580
581 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
582 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
583
584 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
585 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
586
587 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
588 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
589 during extraction.
590
591 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
592 Names".
593
594 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
595
596 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
597 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
598
599 * Incremental archives
600
601 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
602
603 * Bugfixes.
604 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
605 archives.
606
607 \f
608 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
609
610 * New option --exclude-vcs
611
612 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
613 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
614
615 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
616
617 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
618
619 --exclude-caches
620 --exclude-caches-all
621 --exclude-tag
622 --exclude-tag-all
623 --exclude-tag-under
624
625 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
626
627 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
628 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
629 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
630 settings.
631
632 * Fix --version output.
633
634 * Recognition of broken archives.
635
636 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
637 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
638 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
639 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
640
641 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
642
643 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
644
645 \f
646 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
647
648 * Licensed under the GPLv3
649
650 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
651
652 \f
653 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
654
655 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
656 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
657
658 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
659 a full dump when both options were given.
660
661 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
662 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
663
664 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
665
666 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
667 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
668 option affects hard link targets as well.
669
670 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
671 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
672
673 \f
674 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
675
676 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
677 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
678 be archived.
679
680 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
681 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
682 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
683 still added to the archive.
684
685 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
686 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
687 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
688 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
689 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
690 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
691 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
692
693 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
694 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
695 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
696
697 \f
698 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
699
700 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
701 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
702 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
703
704 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
705 members during creation.
706
707 * Bug fixes
708 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
709 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
710 the listing to stderr.
711
712 \f
713 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
714
715 * Incompatible changes
716
717 ** Globbing
718
719 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
720 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
721
722 tar xf foo.tar '*.c'
723
724 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
725 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
726 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
727 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
728 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
729 named '*.c'.
730
731 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
732 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
733 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
734
735 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
736 following command line options:
737
738 --wildcards use wildcards
739 --anchored patterns match file name start
740 --ignore-case ignore case
741 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
742
743 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
744 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
745
746 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
747 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
748 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
749
750 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
751 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
752
753 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
754 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
755 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
756 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
757
758 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
759
760 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
761 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
762
763 * New features
764
765 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
766 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
767 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
768
769 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
770
771 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
772
773 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
774 versions it worked only with --extract.
775
776 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
777 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
778 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
779 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
780 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
781 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
782
783 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
784 as well as that about directories.
785
786 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
787 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
788 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
789 checkpoints.
790
791 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
792 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
793 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
794 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
795 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
796
797 * Bug fixes
798 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
799
800 \f
801 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
802
803 * New features
804
805 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
806 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
807 including another -T option.
808 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
809 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
810 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
811 dash, use the --add-file option.
812
813 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
814 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
815
816 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
817 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
818 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
819
820 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
821 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
822 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
823 they do not.
824
825 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
826 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
827
828 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
829 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
830 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
831 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
832
833 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
834 specified command.
835
836 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
837 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
838 access times.
839
840 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
841 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
842 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
843 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
844 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
845
846 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
847 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
848
849 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
850 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
851 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
852 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
853 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
854 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
855 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
856
857 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
858 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
859 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
860 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
861
862 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
863 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
864 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
865 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
866
867 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
868 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
869 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
870
871 * Bug fixes
872
873 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
874 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
875 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
876 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
877 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
878 was not processed correctly.
879 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
880 during reading.
881 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
882 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
883 modification times.
884 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
885 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
886 (for ustar and v7 formats).
887 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
888 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
889 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
890 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
891 needed.
892
893 \f
894 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
895
896 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
897 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
898
899 \f
900 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
901
902 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
903 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
904 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
905
906 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
907 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
908 from being purged.
909
910 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
911 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
912 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
913 back up. This change fixes the bug.
914
915 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
916 the GNU convention.
917
918 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
919 seeks.
920
921 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
922 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
923
924 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
925 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
926
927 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
928 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
929 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
930
931 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
932
933 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
934 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
935 introduced in version 1.14
936
937 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
938 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
939 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
940 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
941 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
942
943 * Bug fixes:
944 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
945 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
946 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
947 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
948 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
949 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
950 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
951 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
952 extracted copy in such cases.
953 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
954 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
955 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
956 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
957 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
958 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
959 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
960
961 \f
962 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
963
964 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
965 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
966 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
967 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
968 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
969 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
970 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
971
972 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
973 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
974 the previous default behavior.
975
976 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
977 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
978 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
979 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
980 in future.
981
982 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
983 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
984 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
985 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
986 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
987
988 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
989 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
990 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
991 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
992 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
993 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
994 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
995
996 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
997 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
998 -o option.
999
1000 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
1001 individual files, as well as on directories.
1002
1003 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
1004 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
1005 option is given to configure.
1006
1007 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
1008 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
1009 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
1010 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
1011 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
1012 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
1013 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
1014 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
1015 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
1016
1017 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
1018 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
1019 tar.
1020
1021 * Removed obsolete command line options:
1022 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
1023 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
1024 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
1025 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
1026 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
1027 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
1028 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
1029
1030 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
1031 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
1032 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
1033 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
1034
1035 * Bug fixes.
1036
1037 \f
1038 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
1039
1040 * Bug fixes.
1041
1042 \f
1043 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
1044
1045 * New option --overwrite-dir.
1046 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
1047 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
1048
1049 \f
1050 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
1051
1052 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
1053
1054 \f
1055 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
1056
1057 * Bug fixes.
1058
1059 \f
1060 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
1061
1062 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
1063
1064 \f
1065 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
1066
1067 * Some bugs were fixed:
1068 - security problems
1069 - hard links to symbolic links
1070
1071 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
1072
1073 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
1074 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
1075 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
1076 exclude patterns are interpreted.
1077
1078 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
1079 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
1080 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
1081 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
1082 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
1083 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
1084 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
1085 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
1086
1087 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
1088 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
1089 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
1090
1091 \f
1092 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
1093
1094 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
1095 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
1096
1097 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
1098 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
1099
1100 \f
1101 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
1102
1103 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
1104 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
1105 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
1106
1107 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
1108 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
1109
1110 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
1111
1112 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
1113
1114 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
1115
1116 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
1117
1118 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
1119 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
1120
1121 * New language supported: da.
1122
1123 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
1124 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
1125
1126 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
1127 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
1128
1129 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
1130
1131 \f
1132 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
1133
1134 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
1135 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
1136
1137 \f
1138 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
1139
1140 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
1141 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
1142 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
1143 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
1144 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
1145 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
1146 longstanding security problems.
1147
1148 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
1149
1150 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1151 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1152 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1153 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1154 extracting a new directory.
1155
1156 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1157 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1158 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1159
1160 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1161 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1162
1163 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1164 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1165 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1166 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1167 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1168 names have multibyte chars.
1169
1170 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1171 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1172 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1173 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1174 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1175 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1176 are also escaped as needed.
1177
1178 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1179 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1180
1181 \f
1182 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1183
1184 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1185 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1186
1187 \f
1188 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1189
1190 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1191 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1192 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1193
1194 \f
1195 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1196
1197 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1198 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1199 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1200 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1201
1202 \f
1203 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1204
1205 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1206
1207 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1208
1209 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1210
1211 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1212 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1213 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1214 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1215 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1216 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1217 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1218 and which rejects large files.
1219
1220 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1221 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1222 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1223 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1224
1225 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1226 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1227 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1228
1229 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1230
1231 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1232
1233 \f
1234 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1235
1236 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1237 for compatibility with paxutils.
1238
1239 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1240 if no explicit operands were given.
1241
1242 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1243 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1244 even if they begin with '-'.
1245
1246 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1247 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1248 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1249 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1250 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1251 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1252
1253 \f
1254 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1255
1256 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1257 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1258 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1259
1260 \f
1261 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1262
1263 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1264 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1265
1266 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1267 as a zero block.
1268
1269 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1270 numeric header field.
1271
1272 \f
1273 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1274
1275 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1276 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1277 the original file or directory.
1278
1279 \f
1280 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1281
1282 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1283
1284 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1285 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1286
1287 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1288
1289 \f
1290 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1291
1292 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1293 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1294 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1295
1296 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1297 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1298 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1299 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1300 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1301 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1302
1303 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1304 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1305 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1306 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1307
1308 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1309 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1310 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1311
1312 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1313
1314 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1315
1316 \f
1317 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1318
1319 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1320
1321 \f
1322 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1323
1324 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1325 this matches historical practice.
1326
1327 \f
1328 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1329
1330 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1331 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1332 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1333
1334 \f
1335 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1336
1337 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1338
1339 \f
1340 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1341
1342 * Bug fixes only.
1343 \f
1344 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1345
1346 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1347 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1348 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1349 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1350 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1351 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1352 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1353 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1354 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1355 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1356 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1357 \f
1358 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1359
1360 Sensitive matters
1361 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1362 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1363
1364 Output for humans
1365 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1366 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1367 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1368 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1369
1370 Creation
1371 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1372 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1373 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1374 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1375 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1376 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1377
1378 Extraction
1379 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1380 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1381 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1382 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1383 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1384 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1385 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1386 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1387 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1388
1389 Various changes
1390 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1391 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1392 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1393 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1394 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1395 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1396 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1397 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1398
1399 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1400 \f
1401 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1402
1403 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1404 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1405 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1406 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1407 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1408
1409 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1410 \f
1411 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1412
1413 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1414 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1415 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1416 DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT.
1417
1418 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1419
1420 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1421
1422 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1423 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1424 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1425 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1426
1427 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1428
1429 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1430
1431 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1432 for --info-script.
1433
1434 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1435
1436 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1437
1438 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1439 \f
1440 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1441
1442 * Many bug fixes.
1443 \f
1444 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1445 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1446 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1447 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1448 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1449
1450 * Many bug fixes.
1451
1452 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1453
1454 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1455 for it will eventually be removed.
1456
1457 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1458 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1459
1460 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1461 after they are added to the archive.
1462
1463 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1464 the exit status.
1465
1466 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1467 is being read or written.
1468
1469 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1470 omitted from the archive.
1471
1472 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1473 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1474
1475 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1476 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1477
1478 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1479 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1480 around to the beginning.
1481
1482 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1483 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1484 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1485
1486 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1487 their original values after dumping the file.
1488
1489 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1490 what to dump.
1491
1492 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1493 modification and access times.
1494
1495 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1496 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1497 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1498 long names to work.
1499 \f
1500 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1501
1502 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1503 +newer-mtime work right.
1504
1505 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1506
1507 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1508
1509 * +volume is now called +label.
1510
1511 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1512 what +exclude used to do.
1513
1514 * Exit status is now correct.
1515
1516 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1517
1518 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1519
1520 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1521 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1522 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1523
1524 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1525 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1526 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1527 all our backups at the FSF.
1528 \f
1529 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1530 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1531 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1532
1533 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1534
1535 \f
1536
1537 Copyright 1994-2001, 2003-2010, 2013-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1538
1539 This file is part of GNU tar.
1540
1541 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1542 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1543 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
1544 (at your option) any later version.
1545
1546 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1547 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1548 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1549 GNU General Public License for more details.
1550
1551 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1552 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1553 \f
1554 Local variables:
1555 mode: outline
1556 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
1557 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1558 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1559 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1560 time-stamp-end: "\n"
1561 end:
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