1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2009-08-05
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
7 * Record size autodetection
9 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
10 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
11 to regular files and pipes).
14 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
15 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
16 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
17 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
20 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
22 * Support for xz compression
24 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
26 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
27 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
28 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
29 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
31 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
33 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
34 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
35 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
37 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
41 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
42 --use-compress-program.
44 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
47 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
51 A shortcut for --lzma.
55 * New option --no-auto-compress
57 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
59 * New option --no-null
61 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
63 * Compressed format recognition
65 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
66 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
70 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
73 * Transformation scope flags
75 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
76 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
79 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
82 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
85 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
87 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
88 `H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
90 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
93 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
95 Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
96 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
97 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
98 can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
100 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
104 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
106 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If detected record size differs from
107 the expected value (either default, or set on the command line), tar
108 always prints a warning if verbosity level is set to 1 or greater,
109 i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
113 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
115 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
117 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
118 of the archive file name.
122 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
124 * New option --hard-dereference
126 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
127 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
129 * New option --checkpoint-action
131 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
132 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
133 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
134 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
135 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
136 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
138 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
140 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
141 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
142 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
145 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
146 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
147 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
148 environment variable.
150 * The --transform option.
152 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
153 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
155 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
156 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
158 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
159 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
162 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
165 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
167 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
168 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
170 * Incremental archives
172 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
175 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
179 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
181 * New option --exclude-vcs
183 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
184 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
186 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
188 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
196 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
198 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
199 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
200 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
203 * Fix --version output.
205 * Recognition of broken archives.
207 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
208 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
209 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
210 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
212 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
214 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
217 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
219 * Licensed under the GPLv3
221 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
224 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
226 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
227 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
229 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
230 a full dump when both options were given.
232 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
233 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
235 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
237 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
238 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
239 option affects hard link targets as well.
241 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
242 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
245 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
247 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
248 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
251 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
252 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
253 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
254 still added to the archive.
256 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
257 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
258 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
259 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
260 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
261 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
262 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
264 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
265 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
266 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
269 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
271 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
272 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
273 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
275 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
276 members during creation.
279 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
280 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
281 the listing to stderr.
284 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
286 * Incompatible changes
290 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
291 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
295 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
296 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
297 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
298 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
299 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
302 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
303 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
304 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
306 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
307 following command line options:
309 --wildcards use wildcards
310 --anchored patterns match file name start
311 --ignore-case ignore case
312 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
314 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
315 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
317 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
318 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
319 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
321 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
322 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
324 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
325 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
326 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
327 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
329 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
331 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
332 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
336 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
337 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
338 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
340 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
342 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
344 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
345 versions it worked only with --extract.
347 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
348 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
349 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
350 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
351 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
352 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
354 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
355 as well as that about directories.
357 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
358 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
359 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
362 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
363 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
364 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
365 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
366 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
369 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
372 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
376 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
377 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
378 including another -T option.
379 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
380 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
381 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
382 dash, use the --add-file option.
384 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
385 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
387 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
388 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
389 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
391 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
392 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
393 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
396 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
397 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
399 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
400 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
401 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
402 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
404 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
407 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
408 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
411 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
412 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
413 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
414 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
415 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
417 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
418 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
420 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
421 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
422 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
423 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
424 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
425 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
426 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
428 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
429 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
430 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
431 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
433 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
434 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
435 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
436 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
438 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
439 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
440 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
444 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
445 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
446 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
447 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
448 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
449 was not processed correctly.
450 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
452 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
453 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
455 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
456 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
457 (for ustar and v7 formats).
458 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
459 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
460 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
461 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
465 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
467 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
468 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
471 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
473 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
474 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
475 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
477 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
478 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
481 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
482 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
483 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
484 back up. This change fixes the bug.
486 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
489 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
492 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
493 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
495 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
496 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
498 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
499 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
500 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
502 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
504 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
505 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
506 introduced in version 1.14
508 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
509 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
510 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
511 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
512 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
515 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
516 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
517 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
518 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
519 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
520 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
521 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
522 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
523 extracted copy in such cases.
524 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
525 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
526 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
527 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
528 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
529 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
530 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
533 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
535 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
536 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
537 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
538 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
539 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
540 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
541 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
543 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
544 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
545 the previous default behavior.
547 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
548 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
549 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
550 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
553 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
554 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
555 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
556 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
557 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
559 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
560 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
561 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
562 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
563 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
564 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
565 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
567 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
568 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
571 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
572 individual files, as well as on directories.
574 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
575 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
576 option is given to configure.
578 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
579 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
580 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
581 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
582 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
583 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
584 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
585 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
586 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
588 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
589 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
592 * Removed obsolete command line options:
593 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
594 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
595 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
596 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
597 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
598 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
599 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
601 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
602 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
603 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
604 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
609 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
614 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
616 * New option --overwrite-dir.
617 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
618 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
621 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
623 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
626 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
631 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
633 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
636 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
638 * Some bugs were fixed:
640 - hard links to symbolic links
642 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
644 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
645 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
646 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
647 exclude patterns are interpreted.
649 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
650 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
651 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
652 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
653 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
654 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
655 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
656 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
658 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
659 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
660 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
663 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
665 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
666 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
668 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
669 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
672 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
674 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
675 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
676 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
678 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
679 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
681 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
683 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
685 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
687 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
689 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
690 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
692 * New language supported: da.
694 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
695 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
697 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
698 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
700 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
703 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
705 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
706 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
709 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
711 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
712 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
713 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
714 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
715 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
716 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
717 longstanding security problems.
719 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
721 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
722 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
723 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
724 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
725 extracting a new directory.
727 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
728 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
729 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
731 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
732 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
734 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
735 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
736 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
737 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
738 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
739 names have multibyte chars.
741 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
742 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
743 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
744 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
745 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
746 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
747 are also escaped as needed.
749 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
750 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
753 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
755 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
756 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
759 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
761 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
762 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
763 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
766 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
768 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
769 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
770 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
771 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
774 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
776 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
778 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
780 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
782 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
783 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
784 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
785 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
786 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
787 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
788 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
789 and which rejects large files.
791 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
792 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
793 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
794 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
796 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
797 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
798 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
800 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
802 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
805 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
807 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
808 for compatibility with paxutils.
810 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
811 if no explicit operands were given.
813 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
814 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
815 even if they begin with `-'.
817 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
818 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
819 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
820 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
821 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
822 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
825 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
827 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
828 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
829 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
832 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
834 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
835 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
837 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
840 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
841 numeric header field.
844 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
846 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
847 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
848 the original file or directory.
851 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
853 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
855 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
856 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
858 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
861 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
863 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
864 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
865 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
867 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
868 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
869 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
870 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
871 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
872 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
874 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
875 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
876 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
877 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
879 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
880 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
881 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
883 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
885 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
888 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
890 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
893 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
895 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
896 this matches historical practice.
899 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
901 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
902 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
903 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
906 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
908 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
911 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
915 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
917 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
918 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
919 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
920 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
921 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
922 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
923 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
924 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
925 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
926 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
927 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
929 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
932 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
933 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
936 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
937 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
938 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
939 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
942 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
943 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
944 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
945 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
946 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
947 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
950 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
951 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
952 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
953 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
954 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
955 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
956 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
957 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
958 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
961 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
962 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
963 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
964 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
965 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
966 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
967 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
968 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
970 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
972 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
974 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
975 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
976 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
977 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
978 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
980 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
982 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
984 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
985 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
986 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
989 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
991 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
993 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
994 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
995 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
996 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
998 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1000 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1002 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1005 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1007 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1009 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1011 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1015 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1016 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1017 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1018 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1019 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1023 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1025 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
1026 for it will eventually be removed.
1028 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1029 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1031 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1032 after they are added to the archive.
1034 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1037 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1038 is being read or written.
1040 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1041 omitted from the archive.
1043 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1044 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1046 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1047 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1049 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1050 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1051 around to the beginning.
1053 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1054 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1055 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
1057 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1058 their original values after dumping the file.
1060 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1063 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1064 modification and access times.
1066 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1067 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1068 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1071 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1073 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1074 +newer-mtime work right.
1076 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1078 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1080 * +volume is now called +label.
1082 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1083 what +exclude used to do.
1085 * Exit status is now correct.
1087 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1089 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1091 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1092 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1093 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1095 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1096 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1097 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1098 all our backups at the FSF.
1100 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1101 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1102 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1104 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1108 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1109 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1111 This file is part of GNU tar.
1113 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1114 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1115 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1118 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1119 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1120 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1121 GNU General Public License for more details.
1123 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1124 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1125 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1126 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1130 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1131 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1132 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1133 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1134 time-stamp-end: "\n"