1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2007-12-05
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
7 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
9 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
10 of the archive file name.
14 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
16 * New option --hard-dereference
18 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
19 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
21 * New option --checkpoint-action
23 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
24 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
25 echo=string, and sleep=value. Any number of `--checkpoint-action'
26 options can be specified, the actions will be executed in order of
27 their appearance in the command line.
29 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
31 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
32 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
35 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
39 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
41 * New option --exclude-vcs
43 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
44 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
46 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
48 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
56 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
58 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
59 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
60 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
63 * Fix --version output.
65 * Recognition of broken archives.
67 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
68 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
69 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
70 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
72 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
74 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
77 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
79 * Licensed under the GPLv3
81 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
84 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
86 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
87 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
89 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
90 a full dump when both options were given.
92 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
93 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
95 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
97 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
98 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
99 option affects hard link targets as well.
101 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
102 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
105 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
107 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
108 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
111 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
112 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
113 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
114 still added to the archive.
116 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
117 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
118 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
119 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
120 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
121 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
122 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
124 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
125 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
126 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
129 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
131 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
132 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
133 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
135 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
136 members during creation.
139 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
140 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
141 the listing to stderr.
144 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
146 * Incompatible changes
150 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
151 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
155 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
156 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
157 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
158 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
159 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
162 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
163 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
164 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
166 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
167 following command line options:
169 --wildcards use wildcards
170 --anchored patterns match file name start
171 --ignore-case ignore case
172 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
174 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
175 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
177 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
178 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
179 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
181 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
182 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
184 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
185 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
186 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
187 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
189 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
191 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
192 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
196 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
197 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
198 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
200 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
202 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
204 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
205 versions it worked only with --extract.
207 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
208 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
209 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
210 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
211 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
212 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
214 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
215 as well as that about directories.
217 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
218 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
219 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
222 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
223 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
224 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
225 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
226 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
229 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
232 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
236 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
237 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
238 including another -T option.
239 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
240 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
241 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
242 dash, use the --add-file option.
244 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
245 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
247 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
248 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
249 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
251 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
252 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
253 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
256 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
257 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
259 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
260 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
261 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
262 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
264 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
267 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
268 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
271 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
272 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
273 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
274 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
275 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
277 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
278 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
280 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
281 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
282 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
283 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
284 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
285 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
286 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
288 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
289 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
290 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
291 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
293 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
294 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
295 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
296 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
298 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
299 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
300 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
304 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
305 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
306 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
307 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
308 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
309 was not processed correctly.
310 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
312 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
313 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
315 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
316 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
317 (for ustar and v7 formats).
318 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
319 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
320 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
321 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
325 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
327 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
328 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
331 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
333 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
334 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
335 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
337 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
338 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
341 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
342 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
343 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
344 back up. This change fixes the bug.
346 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
349 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
352 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
353 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
355 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
356 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
358 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
359 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
360 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
362 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
364 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
365 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
366 introduced in version 1.14
368 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
369 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
370 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
371 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
372 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
375 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
376 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
377 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
378 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
379 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
380 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
381 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
382 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
383 extracted copy in such cases.
384 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
385 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
386 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
387 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
388 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
389 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
390 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
393 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
395 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
396 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
397 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
398 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
399 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
400 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
401 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
403 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
404 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
405 the previous default behavior.
407 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
408 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
409 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
410 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
413 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
414 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
415 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
416 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
417 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
419 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
420 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
421 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
422 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
423 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
424 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
425 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
427 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
428 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
431 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
432 individual files, as well as on directories.
434 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
435 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
436 option is given to configure.
438 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
439 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
440 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
441 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
442 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
443 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
444 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
445 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
446 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
448 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
449 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
452 * Removed obsolete command line options:
453 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
454 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
455 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
456 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
457 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
458 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
459 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
461 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
462 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
463 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
464 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
469 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
474 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
476 * New option --overwrite-dir.
477 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
478 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
481 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
483 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
486 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
491 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
493 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
496 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
498 * Some bugs were fixed:
500 - hard links to symbolic links
502 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
504 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
505 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
506 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
507 exclude patterns are interpreted.
509 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
510 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
511 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
512 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
513 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
514 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
515 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
516 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
518 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
519 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
520 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
523 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
525 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
526 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
528 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
529 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
532 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
534 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
535 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
536 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
538 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
539 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
541 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
543 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
545 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
547 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
549 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
550 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
552 * New language supported: da.
554 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
555 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
557 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
558 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
560 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
563 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
565 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
566 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
569 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
571 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
572 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
573 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
574 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
575 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
576 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
577 longstanding security problems.
579 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
581 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
582 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
583 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
584 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
585 extracting a new directory.
587 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
588 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
589 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
591 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
592 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
594 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
595 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
596 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
597 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
598 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
599 names have multibyte chars.
601 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
602 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
603 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
604 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
605 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
606 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
607 are also escaped as needed.
609 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
610 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
613 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
615 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
616 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
619 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
621 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
622 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
623 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
626 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
628 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
629 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
630 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
631 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
634 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
636 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
638 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
640 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
642 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
643 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
644 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
645 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
646 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
647 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
648 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
649 and which rejects large files.
651 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
652 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
653 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
654 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
656 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
657 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
658 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
660 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
662 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
665 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
667 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
668 for compatibility with paxutils.
670 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
671 if no explicit operands were given.
673 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
674 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
675 even if they begin with `-'.
677 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
678 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
679 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
680 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
681 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
682 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
685 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
687 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
688 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
689 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
692 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
694 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
695 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
697 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
700 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
701 numeric header field.
704 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
706 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
707 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
708 the original file or directory.
711 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
713 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
715 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
716 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
718 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
721 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
723 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
724 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
725 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
727 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
728 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
729 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
730 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
731 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
732 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
734 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
735 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
736 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
737 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
739 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
740 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
741 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
743 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
745 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
748 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
750 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
753 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
755 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
756 this matches historical practice.
759 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
761 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
762 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
763 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
766 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
768 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
771 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
775 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
777 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
778 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
779 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
780 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
781 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
782 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
783 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
784 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
785 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
786 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
787 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
789 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
792 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
793 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
796 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
797 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
798 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
799 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
802 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
803 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
804 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
805 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
806 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
807 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
810 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
811 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
812 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
813 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
814 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
815 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
816 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
817 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
818 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
821 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
822 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
823 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
824 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
825 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
826 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
827 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
828 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
830 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
832 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
834 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
835 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
836 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
837 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
838 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
840 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
842 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
844 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
845 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
846 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
849 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
851 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
853 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
854 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
855 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
856 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
858 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
860 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
862 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
865 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
867 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
869 * Several Makefile cleanups.
871 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
875 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
876 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
877 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
878 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
879 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
883 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
885 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
886 for it will eventually be removed.
888 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
889 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
891 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
892 after they are added to the archive.
894 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
897 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
898 is being read or written.
900 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
901 omitted from the archive.
903 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
904 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
906 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
907 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
909 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
910 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
911 around to the beginning.
913 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
914 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
915 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
917 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
918 their original values after dumping the file.
920 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
923 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
924 modification and access times.
926 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
927 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
928 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
931 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
933 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
934 +newer-mtime work right.
936 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
938 * Sparse files now work correctly.
940 * +volume is now called +label.
942 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
943 what +exclude used to do.
945 * Exit status is now correct.
947 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
949 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
951 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
952 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
953 point instead of waiting for a write error.
955 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
956 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
957 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
958 all our backups at the FSF.
960 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
961 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
962 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
964 * See ChangeLog for more details.
968 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
969 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
971 This file is part of GNU tar.
973 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
974 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
975 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
978 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
979 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
980 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
981 GNU General Public License for more details.
983 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
984 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
985 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
986 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
990 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
991 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
992 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
993 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"