1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2008-10-22
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
13 * New option --no-auto-compress
15 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
17 * New option --no-null
19 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
21 * Compressed format recognition
23 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
24 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
28 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
31 * The --transform-symlink option.
33 The effect of the --transform option on the symbolic links targets is
34 controlled by --transform-symlink and --no-transform-symlink options.
35 By default, transformations do not apply to symlink targets,
36 which corresponds to the behavior of version 1.19. To apply
37 transformations to symlink targets as well, use --transform-symlink
38 option. The --no-transform-symlink option cancels the effect of any
39 prior --transform-symlink.
43 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
45 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
46 the expected value (either default, or set on the command line), tar
47 always prints a warning if verbosity level is set to 1 or greater,
48 i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
52 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
54 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
56 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
57 of the archive file name.
61 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
63 * New option --hard-dereference
65 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
66 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
68 * New option --checkpoint-action
70 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
71 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
72 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
73 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
74 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
75 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
77 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
79 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
80 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
81 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
84 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
85 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
86 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
89 * The --transform option.
91 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
92 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
94 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
95 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
97 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
98 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
101 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
104 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
106 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
107 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
109 * Incremental archives
111 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
114 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
118 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
120 * New option --exclude-vcs
122 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
123 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
125 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
127 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
135 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
137 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
138 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
139 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
142 * Fix --version output.
144 * Recognition of broken archives.
146 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
147 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
148 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
149 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
151 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
153 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
156 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
158 * Licensed under the GPLv3
160 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
163 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
165 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
166 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
168 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
169 a full dump when both options were given.
171 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
172 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
174 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
176 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
177 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
178 option affects hard link targets as well.
180 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
181 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
184 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
186 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
187 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
190 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
191 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
192 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
193 still added to the archive.
195 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
196 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
197 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
198 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
199 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
200 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
201 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
203 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
204 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
205 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
208 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
210 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
211 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
212 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
214 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
215 members during creation.
218 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
219 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
220 the listing to stderr.
223 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
225 * Incompatible changes
229 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
230 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
234 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
235 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
236 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
237 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
238 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
241 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
242 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
243 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
245 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
246 following command line options:
248 --wildcards use wildcards
249 --anchored patterns match file name start
250 --ignore-case ignore case
251 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
253 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
254 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
256 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
257 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
258 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
260 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
261 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
263 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
264 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
265 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
266 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
268 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
270 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
271 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
275 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
276 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
277 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
279 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
281 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
283 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
284 versions it worked only with --extract.
286 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
287 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
288 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
289 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
290 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
291 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
293 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
294 as well as that about directories.
296 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
297 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
298 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
301 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
302 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
303 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
304 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
305 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
308 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
311 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
315 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
316 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
317 including another -T option.
318 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
319 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
320 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
321 dash, use the --add-file option.
323 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
324 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
326 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
327 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
328 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
330 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
331 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
332 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
335 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
336 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
338 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
339 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
340 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
341 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
343 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
346 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
347 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
350 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
351 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
352 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
353 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
354 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
356 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
357 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
359 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
360 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
361 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
362 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
363 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
364 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
365 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
367 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
368 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
369 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
370 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
372 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
373 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
374 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
375 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
377 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
378 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
379 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
383 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
384 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
385 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
386 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
387 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
388 was not processed correctly.
389 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
391 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
392 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
394 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
395 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
396 (for ustar and v7 formats).
397 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
398 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
399 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
400 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
404 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
406 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
407 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
410 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
412 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
413 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
414 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
416 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
417 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
420 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
421 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
422 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
423 back up. This change fixes the bug.
425 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
428 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
431 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
432 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
434 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
435 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
437 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
438 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
439 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
441 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
443 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
444 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
445 introduced in version 1.14
447 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
448 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
449 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
450 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
451 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
454 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
455 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
456 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
457 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
458 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
459 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
460 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
461 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
462 extracted copy in such cases.
463 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
464 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
465 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
466 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
467 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
468 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
469 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
472 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
474 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
475 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
476 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
477 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
478 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
479 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
480 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
482 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
483 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
484 the previous default behavior.
486 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
487 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
488 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
489 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
492 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
493 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
494 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
495 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
496 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
498 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
499 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
500 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
501 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
502 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
503 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
504 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
506 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
507 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
510 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
511 individual files, as well as on directories.
513 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
514 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
515 option is given to configure.
517 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
518 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
519 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
520 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
521 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
522 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
523 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
524 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
525 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
527 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
528 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
531 * Removed obsolete command line options:
532 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
533 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
534 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
535 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
536 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
537 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
538 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
540 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
541 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
542 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
543 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
548 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
553 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
555 * New option --overwrite-dir.
556 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
557 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
560 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
562 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
565 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
570 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
572 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
575 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
577 * Some bugs were fixed:
579 - hard links to symbolic links
581 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
583 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
584 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
585 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
586 exclude patterns are interpreted.
588 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
589 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
590 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
591 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
592 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
593 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
594 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
595 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
597 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
598 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
599 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
602 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
604 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
605 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
607 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
608 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
611 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
613 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
614 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
615 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
617 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
618 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
620 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
622 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
624 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
626 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
628 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
629 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
631 * New language supported: da.
633 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
634 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
636 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
637 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
639 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
642 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
644 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
645 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
648 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
650 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
651 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
652 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
653 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
654 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
655 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
656 longstanding security problems.
658 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
660 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
661 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
662 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
663 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
664 extracting a new directory.
666 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
667 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
668 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
670 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
671 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
673 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
674 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
675 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
676 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
677 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
678 names have multibyte chars.
680 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
681 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
682 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
683 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
684 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
685 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
686 are also escaped as needed.
688 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
689 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
692 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
694 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
695 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
698 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
700 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
701 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
702 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
705 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
707 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
708 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
709 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
710 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
713 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
715 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
717 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
719 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
721 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
722 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
723 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
724 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
725 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
726 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
727 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
728 and which rejects large files.
730 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
731 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
732 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
733 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
735 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
736 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
737 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
739 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
741 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
744 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
746 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
747 for compatibility with paxutils.
749 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
750 if no explicit operands were given.
752 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
753 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
754 even if they begin with `-'.
756 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
757 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
758 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
759 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
760 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
761 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
764 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
766 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
767 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
768 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
771 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
773 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
774 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
776 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
779 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
780 numeric header field.
783 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
785 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
786 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
787 the original file or directory.
790 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
792 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
794 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
795 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
797 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
800 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
802 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
803 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
804 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
806 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
807 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
808 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
809 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
810 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
811 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
813 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
814 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
815 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
816 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
818 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
819 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
820 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
822 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
824 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
827 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
829 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
832 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
834 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
835 this matches historical practice.
838 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
840 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
841 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
842 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
845 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
847 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
850 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
854 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
856 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
857 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
858 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
859 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
860 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
861 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
862 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
863 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
864 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
865 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
866 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
868 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
871 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
872 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
875 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
876 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
877 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
878 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
881 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
882 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
883 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
884 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
885 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
886 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
889 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
890 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
891 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
892 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
893 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
894 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
895 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
896 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
897 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
900 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
901 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
902 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
903 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
904 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
905 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
906 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
907 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
909 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
911 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
913 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
914 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
915 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
916 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
917 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
919 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
921 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
923 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
924 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
925 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
928 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
930 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
932 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
933 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
934 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
935 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
937 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
939 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
941 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
944 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
946 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
948 * Several Makefile cleanups.
950 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
954 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
955 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
956 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
957 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
958 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
962 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
964 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
965 for it will eventually be removed.
967 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
968 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
970 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
971 after they are added to the archive.
973 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
976 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
977 is being read or written.
979 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
980 omitted from the archive.
982 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
983 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
985 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
986 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
988 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
989 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
990 around to the beginning.
992 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
993 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
994 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
996 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
997 their original values after dumping the file.
999 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1002 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1003 modification and access times.
1005 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1006 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1007 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1010 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1012 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1013 +newer-mtime work right.
1015 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1017 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1019 * +volume is now called +label.
1021 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1022 what +exclude used to do.
1024 * Exit status is now correct.
1026 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1028 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1030 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1031 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1032 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1034 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1035 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1036 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1037 all our backups at the FSF.
1039 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1040 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1041 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1043 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1047 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1048 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1050 This file is part of GNU tar.
1052 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1053 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1054 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1057 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1058 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1059 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1060 GNU General Public License for more details.
1062 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1063 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1064 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1065 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1069 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1070 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1071 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1072 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1073 time-stamp-end: "\n"