Suggestions for improving GNU tar. * Incorporate fixes from major distributions, e.g., Debian GNU/Linux. * Fix tar so that it can read and write POSIX.1-1990 tar archives. * Add support for POSIX 1003.1-2001 tar archives (along with technical corrections to the standard since 2001). * Add support for a 'pax' command that conforms to POSIX 1003.1-2001. This would unify paxutils with tar. * Remove command-line incompatibilities between GNU tar and UNIX tar as specified by UNIX98. The main problem is: l GNU tar doesn't cross filesystem boundaries. UNIX98 tar warns if all links cannot be resolved. (GNU tar --check-links option) Perhaps we could announce a phase-in period where "l" changes in semantics. In the meanwhile we could make the "l" semantics to be determined by the value of POSIXLY_CORRECT variable. * Interoperate better with Joerg Schilling's star implementation. * Add an option to remove files that compare successfully. From: Roesinger Eric Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 18:43:43 -0500 It would be useful to be able to use '--remove-files' with '--diff', to remove all files that compare successfully, when verifying a backup. * Copyright notice Copyright (C) 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This file is part of GNU tar. GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version. GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.