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1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-07-16
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
3
4 \f
5 version 1.23.90 - (Git)
6
7 * The --full-time option.
8
9 New command line option `--full-time' instructs tar to output file
10 time stamps to the full resolution.
11
12 * Bugfixes.
13
14 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
15
16 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
17 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
18 invoked as in the example below:
19
20 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
21
22 ** --remove-files
23
24 Tar --remove-files failed to remove a directory which contained
25 symlinks to another files within that directory.
26
27 ** --test-label behavior
28
29 In case of a mismatch, `tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
30 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
31
32 The `--verbose' option used with `--test-label' provides additional
33 diagnostics.
34
35 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
36
37 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
38
39 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
40 matches the actual volume label.
41
42 ** --label used with --update
43
44 The `--label' option can be used with `--update' to prevent accidental
45 update of an archive:
46
47 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
48
49 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
50
51 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
52
53 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
54 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
55
56 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
57
58 \f
59 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
60
61 * Record size autodetection
62
63 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
64 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
65 to regular files and pipes).
66
67 * Seekable archives
68
69 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
70 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
71
72 * New command line option `--warning'
73
74 The `--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
75 particular warning messages during `tar' run. It takes a single
76 argument (a `keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
77 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with `no-', such warning
78 messages are suppressed. For example,
79
80 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
81
82 suppresses the output of `A lone zero block' diagnostics, which is
83 normally issued if `archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
84
85 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
86 detailed discussion.
87
88 * New command line option `--level'
89
90 The `--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
91 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
92 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
93 `--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
94 the snapshot file if it exists.
95
96 * Files removed during incremental dumps
97
98 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
99 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
100 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
101 during file system scan.
102
103 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
104 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
105 fatal error.
106
107 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
108 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
109 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
110 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
111 is issued and exit code remains 0.
112
113 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
114
115 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
116 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
117 can be overridden by the
118
119 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
120
121 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
122 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
123
124 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
125 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
126
127 This can be overridden by the
128
129 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
130
131 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
132 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
133
134 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
135
136 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
137 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
138 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
139 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
140 an existing file, starting with `/' or `.'. In the latter
141 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
142
143 * Environment of --to-command script.
144
145 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
146 the following variables:
147
148 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
149 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
150 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
151 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
152 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
153
154 * Bugfixes
155 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
156 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
157 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
158 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
159 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
160 succesfully stored in the archive.
161 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
162 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
163 format).
164 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
165
166 \f
167 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
168
169 * Support for xz compression
170
171 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
172
173 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
174 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
175 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
176 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
177
178 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
179
180 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
181 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
182 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
183
184 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
185
186 * New option -I
187
188 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
189 --use-compress-program.
190
191 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
192
193 \f
194 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
195
196 * New short option -J
197
198 A shortcut for --lzma.
199
200 * New option --lzop
201
202 * New option --no-auto-compress
203
204 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
205
206 * New option --no-null
207
208 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
209
210 * Compressed format recognition
211
212 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
213 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
214
215 * VCS support.
216
217 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
218 Mercurial and Darcs.
219
220 * Transformation scope flags
221
222 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
223 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
224
225 - r
226 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
227
228 - s
229 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
230
231 - h
232 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
233
234 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
235 `H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
236
237 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
238 e.g.:
239
240 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
241
242 Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
243 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
244 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
245 can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
246
247 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
248
249 * Bugfixes
250
251 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
252 is fixed.
253 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
254 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
255 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
256 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
257
258 \f
259
260 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
261
262 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
263
264 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
265 of the archive file name.
266
267 * New option --lzma
268
269 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
270
271 * New option --hard-dereference
272
273 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
274 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
275
276 * New option --checkpoint-action
277
278 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
279 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
280 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
281 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
282 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
283 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
284
285 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
286
287 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
288 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
289 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
290 LVM snapshot).
291
292 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
293 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
294 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
295 environment variable.
296
297 * The --transform option.
298
299 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
300 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
301
302 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
303 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
304
305 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
306 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
307 during extraction.
308
309 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
310 Names".
311
312 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
313
314 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
315 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
316
317 * Incremental archives
318
319 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
320
321 * Bugfixes.
322 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
323 archives.
324
325 \f
326 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
327
328 * New option --exclude-vcs
329
330 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
331 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
332
333 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
334
335 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
336
337 --exclude-caches
338 --exclude-caches-all
339 --exclude-tag
340 --exclude-tag-all
341 --exclude-tag-under
342
343 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
344
345 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
346 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
347 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
348 settings.
349
350 * Fix --version output.
351
352 * Recognition of broken archives.
353
354 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
355 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
356 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
357 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
358
359 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
360
361 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
362
363 \f
364 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
365
366 * Licensed under the GPLv3
367
368 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
369
370 \f
371 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
372
373 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
374 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
375
376 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
377 a full dump when both options were given.
378
379 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
380 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
381
382 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
383
384 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
385 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
386 option affects hard link targets as well.
387
388 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
389 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
390
391 \f
392 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
393
394 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
395 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
396 be archived.
397
398 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
399 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
400 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
401 still added to the archive.
402
403 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
404 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
405 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
406 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
407 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
408 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
409 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
410
411 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
412 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
413 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
414
415 \f
416 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
417
418 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
419 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
420 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
421
422 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
423 members during creation.
424
425 * Bug fixes
426 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
427 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
428 the listing to stderr.
429
430 \f
431 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
432
433 * Incompatible changes
434
435 ** Globbing
436
437 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
438 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
439
440 tar xf foo.tar '*.c'
441
442 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
443 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
444 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
445 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
446 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
447 named '*.c'.
448
449 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
450 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
451 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
452
453 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
454 following command line options:
455
456 --wildcards use wildcards
457 --anchored patterns match file name start
458 --ignore-case ignore case
459 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
460
461 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
462 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
463
464 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
465 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
466 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
467
468 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
469 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
470
471 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
472 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
473 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
474 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
475
476 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
477
478 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
479 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
480
481 * New features
482
483 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
484 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
485 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
486
487 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
488
489 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
490
491 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
492 versions it worked only with --extract.
493
494 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
495 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
496 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
497 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
498 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
499 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
500
501 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
502 as well as that about directories.
503
504 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
505 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
506 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
507 checkpoints.
508
509 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
510 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
511 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
512 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
513 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
514
515 * Bug fixes
516 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
517
518 \f
519 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
520
521 * New features
522
523 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
524 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
525 including another -T option.
526 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
527 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
528 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
529 dash, use the --add-file option.
530
531 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
532 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
533
534 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
535 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
536 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
537
538 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
539 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
540 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
541 they do not.
542
543 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
544 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
545
546 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
547 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
548 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
549 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
550
551 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
552 specified command.
553
554 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
555 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
556 access times.
557
558 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
559 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
560 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
561 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
562 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
563
564 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
565 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
566
567 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
568 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
569 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
570 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
571 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
572 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
573 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
574
575 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
576 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
577 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
578 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
579
580 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
581 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
582 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
583 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
584
585 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
586 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
587 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
588
589 * Bug fixes
590
591 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
592 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
593 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
594 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
595 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
596 was not processed correctly.
597 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
598 during reading.
599 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
600 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
601 modification times.
602 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
603 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
604 (for ustar and v7 formats).
605 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
606 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
607 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
608 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
609 needed.
610
611 \f
612 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
613
614 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
615 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
616
617 \f
618 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
619
620 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
621 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
622 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
623
624 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
625 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
626 from being purged.
627
628 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
629 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
630 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
631 back up. This change fixes the bug.
632
633 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
634 the GNU convention.
635
636 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
637 seeks.
638
639 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
640 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
641
642 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
643 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
644
645 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
646 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
647 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
648
649 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
650
651 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
652 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
653 introduced in version 1.14
654
655 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
656 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
657 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
658 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
659 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
660
661 * Bug fixes:
662 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
663 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
664 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
665 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
666 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
667 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
668 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
669 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
670 extracted copy in such cases.
671 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
672 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
673 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
674 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
675 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
676 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
677 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
678
679 \f
680 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
681
682 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
683 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
684 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
685 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
686 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
687 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
688 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
689
690 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
691 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
692 the previous default behavior.
693
694 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
695 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
696 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
697 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
698 in future.
699
700 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
701 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
702 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
703 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
704 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
705
706 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
707 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
708 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
709 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
710 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
711 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
712 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
713
714 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
715 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
716 -o option.
717
718 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
719 individual files, as well as on directories.
720
721 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
722 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
723 option is given to configure.
724
725 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
726 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
727 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
728 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
729 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
730 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
731 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
732 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
733 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
734
735 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
736 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
737 tar.
738
739 * Removed obsolete command line options:
740 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
741 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
742 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
743 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
744 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
745 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
746 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
747
748 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
749 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
750 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
751 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
752
753 * Bug fixes.
754
755 \f
756 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
757
758 * Bug fixes.
759
760 \f
761 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
762
763 * New option --overwrite-dir.
764 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
765 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
766
767 \f
768 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
769
770 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
771
772 \f
773 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
774
775 * Bug fixes.
776
777 \f
778 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
779
780 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
781
782 \f
783 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
784
785 * Some bugs were fixed:
786 - security problems
787 - hard links to symbolic links
788
789 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
790
791 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
792 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
793 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
794 exclude patterns are interpreted.
795
796 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
797 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
798 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
799 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
800 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
801 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
802 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
803 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
804
805 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
806 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
807 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
808
809 \f
810 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
811
812 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
813 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
814
815 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
816 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
817
818 \f
819 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
820
821 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
822 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
823 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
824
825 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
826 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
827
828 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
829
830 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
831
832 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
833
834 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
835
836 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
837 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
838
839 * New language supported: da.
840
841 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
842 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
843
844 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
845 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
846
847 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
848
849 \f
850 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
851
852 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
853 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
854
855 \f
856 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
857
858 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
859 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
860 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
861 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
862 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
863 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
864 longstanding security problems.
865
866 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
867
868 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
869 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
870 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
871 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
872 extracting a new directory.
873
874 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
875 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
876 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
877
878 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
879 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
880
881 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
882 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
883 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
884 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
885 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
886 names have multibyte chars.
887
888 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
889 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
890 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
891 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
892 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
893 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
894 are also escaped as needed.
895
896 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
897 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
898
899 \f
900 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
901
902 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
903 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
904
905 \f
906 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
907
908 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
909 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
910 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
911
912 \f
913 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
914
915 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
916 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
917 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
918 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
919
920 \f
921 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
922
923 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
924
925 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
926
927 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
928
929 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
930 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
931 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
932 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
933 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
934 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
935 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
936 and which rejects large files.
937
938 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
939 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
940 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
941 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
942
943 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
944 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
945 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
946
947 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
948
949 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
950
951 \f
952 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
953
954 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
955 for compatibility with paxutils.
956
957 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
958 if no explicit operands were given.
959
960 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
961 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
962 even if they begin with `-'.
963
964 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
965 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
966 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
967 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
968 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
969 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
970
971 \f
972 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
973
974 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
975 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
976 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
977
978 \f
979 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
980
981 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
982 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
983
984 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
985 as a zero block.
986
987 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
988 numeric header field.
989
990 \f
991 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
992
993 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
994 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
995 the original file or directory.
996
997 \f
998 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
999
1000 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1001
1002 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
1003 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1004
1005 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1006
1007 \f
1008 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1009
1010 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1011 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1012 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1013
1014 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1015 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1016 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1017 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1018 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1019 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1020
1021 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1022 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1023 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1024 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1025
1026 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1027 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1028 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1029
1030 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1031
1032 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1033
1034 \f
1035 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1036
1037 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1038
1039 \f
1040 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1041
1042 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1043 this matches historical practice.
1044
1045 \f
1046 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1047
1048 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1049 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1050 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1051
1052 \f
1053 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1054
1055 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1056
1057 \f
1058 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1059
1060 * Bug fixes only.
1061 \f
1062 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1063
1064 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1065 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1066 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1067 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1068 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1069 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1070 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1071 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1072 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1073 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1074 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1075 \f
1076 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1077
1078 Sensitive matters
1079 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1080 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1081
1082 Output for humans
1083 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1084 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1085 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1086 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1087
1088 Creation
1089 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1090 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1091 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1092 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1093 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
1094 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1095
1096 Extraction
1097 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1098 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1099 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1100 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1101 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1102 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1103 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1104 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1105 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1106
1107 Various changes
1108 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1109 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1110 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1111 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1112 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1113 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1114 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1115 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1116
1117 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1118 \f
1119 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1120
1121 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1122 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1123 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1124 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1125 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1126
1127 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1128 \f
1129 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1130
1131 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1132 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1133 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1134 DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT.
1135
1136 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1137
1138 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1139
1140 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1141 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1142 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1143 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1144
1145 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1146
1147 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1148
1149 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1150 for --info-script.
1151
1152 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1153
1154 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1155
1156 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1157 \f
1158 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1159
1160 * Many bug fixes.
1161 \f
1162 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1163 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1164 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1165 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1166 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1167
1168 * Many bug fixes.
1169
1170 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1171
1172 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
1173 for it will eventually be removed.
1174
1175 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1176 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1177
1178 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1179 after they are added to the archive.
1180
1181 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1182 the exit status.
1183
1184 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1185 is being read or written.
1186
1187 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1188 omitted from the archive.
1189
1190 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1191 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1192
1193 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1194 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1195
1196 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1197 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1198 around to the beginning.
1199
1200 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1201 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1202 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
1203
1204 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1205 their original values after dumping the file.
1206
1207 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1208 what to dump.
1209
1210 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1211 modification and access times.
1212
1213 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1214 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1215 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1216 long names to work.
1217 \f
1218 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1219
1220 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1221 +newer-mtime work right.
1222
1223 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1224
1225 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1226
1227 * +volume is now called +label.
1228
1229 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1230 what +exclude used to do.
1231
1232 * Exit status is now correct.
1233
1234 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1235
1236 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1237
1238 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1239 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1240 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1241
1242 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1243 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1244 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1245 all our backups at the FSF.
1246 \f
1247 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1248 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1249 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1250
1251 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1252
1253 \f
1254
1255 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1256 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1257
1258 This file is part of GNU tar.
1259
1260 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1261 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1262 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1263 any later version.
1264
1265 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1266 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1267 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1268 GNU General Public License for more details.
1269
1270 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1271 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1272 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1273 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1274 \f
1275 Local variables:
1276 mode: outline
1277 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
1278 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1279 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1280 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1281 time-stamp-end: "\n"
1282 end:
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