GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes.
-Copyright 1994, 1995-1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
+\f
+version 1.15.2 (CVS version -- unreleased)
+
+* New features
+
+* Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
+The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
+including another -T option.
+Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
+as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
+starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
+dash, use the --add-file option.
+
+* List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
+automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
+
+* New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
+This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
+An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
+
+* New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
+If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
+Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
+they do not.
+
+If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
+tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
+
+* New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
+it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
+prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
+`tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
+
+* New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
+specified command.
+
+* New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
+of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
+access times.
+
+* New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
+and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
+This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
+ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
+This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
+
+* New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
+options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
+
+* New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
+quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
+specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
+c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
+specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
+would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
+provided to disable quoting certain characters.
+
+* The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
+get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
+the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
+archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
+
+* Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
+time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
+guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
+stamps to nanosecond resolution.
+
+* The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
+not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
+Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
+
+* Bug fixes
+
+** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
+** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
+used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
+if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
+Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
+was not processed correctly.
+** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
+during reading.
+** Compare mode (tar d) hanged when trying to compare file contents.
+** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
+modification times.
+** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
+meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
+(for ustar and v7 formats).
+** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
+license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
+earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
+option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
+needed.
+
+\f
+version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
+
+This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
+tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
+
+\f
+version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
+
+* Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
+necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
+now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
+
+* When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
+prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
+from being purged.
+
+With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
+incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
+would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
+back up. This change fixes the bug.
+
+* Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
+the GNU convention.
+
+* Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
+seeks.
+
+* Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
+or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
+
+* `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
+the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
+
+* New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
+automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
+containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
+
+ http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
+
+* New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
+the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
+introduced in version 1.14
+
+* New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
+where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
+--libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
+also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
+--enable-backup-scripts was given).
+
+* Bug fixes:
+** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
+** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
+** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
+Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
+** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
+previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
+were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
+lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
+extracted copy in such cases.
+** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
+didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
+** Fixed verification of created archives.
+** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
+versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
+** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
+versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
+
+\f
+version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
+
+* Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
+* New option --format allows to select the output archive format
+* The default output format can be selected at configuration time
+ by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
+ Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
+* New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
+ path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
+
+* New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
+ option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
+ the previous default behavior.
+
+* The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
+ does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
+ with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
+ --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
+ in future.
+
+* New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
+ for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
+ The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
+ with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
+ the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
+
+* New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
+ the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
+ files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
+ option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
+ file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
+ extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
+ and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
+
+* New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
+ keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
+ -o option.
+
+* --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
+ individual files, as well as on directories.
+
+* New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
+The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
+option is given to configure.
+
+* By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
+which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
+included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
+used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
+run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
+already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
+shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
+the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
+DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
+
+Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
+use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
+tar.
+
+* Removed obsolete command line options:
+** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
+** --block-compress is not needed any longer
+** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
+** --modification-time superseded by --touch
+** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
+** --record-number superseded by --block-number
+** --version-control superseded by --backup
+
+* New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
+ hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
+ (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
+ The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
+
+* Bug fixes.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
+
+* Bug fixes.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
+
+* New option --overwrite-dir.
+* Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
+* The message translations for Korean are available again.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
+
+* Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
+
+* Bug fixes.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
+
+* Porting and copyright notice fixes.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
+
+* Some bugs were fixed:
+ - security problems
+ - hard links to symbolic links
+
+* New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
+
+* New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
+ --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
+ Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
+ exclude patterns are interpreted.
+
+* The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
+ --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
+ This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
+ semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
+ became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
+ everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
+ thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
+ that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
+
+* New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
+ The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
+ It will be reissued once those are fixed.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
+
+* The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
+ Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
+
+* With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
+ to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
+
+* Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
+ files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
+ option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
+
+* The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
+ and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
+
+* The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
+
+* The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
+
+* The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
+
+* The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
+
+* Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
+ The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
+
+* New language supported: da.
+
+* Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
+ If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
+
+* This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
+ Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
+
+* `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
+
+* `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
+* Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
+
+* By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
+ extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
+ before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
+ link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
+ exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
+ their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
+ longstanding security problems.
+
+ The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
+
+ For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
+ option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
+ removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
+ the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
+ extracting a new directory.
+
+* By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
+ when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
+ To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
+
+* Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
+ correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
+
+* The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
+ that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
+ locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
+ of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
+ older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
+ names have multibyte chars.
+
+* Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
+ now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
+ `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
+ colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
+ characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
+ Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
+ are also escaped as needed.
+
+* tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
+ Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
+
+* If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
+ Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
+\f
+version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
+
+* New translations ja, pt_BR.
+* New options --help and --version for rmt.
+* Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
+
+* Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
+* `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
+* If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
+* `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
+
+* `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
+
+* New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
+
+* --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
+
+* `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
+ values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
+ format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
+ stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
+ archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
+ GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
+ behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
+ and which rejects large files.
+
+* On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
+ the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
+ 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
+ time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
+
+* `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
+ that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
+ as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
+
+* A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
+
+* Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
+
+* The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
+ for compatibility with paxutils.
+
+* -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
+ if no explicit operands were given.
+
+* The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
+ it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
+ even if they begin with `-'.
+
+* For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
+ abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
+ Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
+ not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
+ numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
+ `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
+
+* `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
+ out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
+ change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
+
+\f
+version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
+
+* `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
+ POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
+
+* `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
+ as a zero block.
+
+* `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
+ numeric header field.
+
+\f
+version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
+
+* For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
+ created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
+ the original file or directory.
+
+\f
version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
* --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
* --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
-
+\f
version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
* An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
- exclude a file if it matches any file name compoment.
+ exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
* The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
- The symbolic format (e.g. "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC" is for portability
+ The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
* When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
- larger uids, negative timestamps, etc.
+ larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
* When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
* New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
-
+\f
version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
* Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
-
+\f
version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
* Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
this matches historical practice.
-
+\f
version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
* A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
-
+\f
version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
* Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
-
+\f
version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
* Bug fixes only.
\f
version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
-* Support for large files, e.g. files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
+* Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
* Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
* This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
- http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/paxutils/
+ ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
* An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
\f
-Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
+Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
Sensitive matters
* Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
* Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
Output for humans
-* Offer internationalisation capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
+* Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
* Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
* Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
-* More normalisation and cleanup in error messages.
+* More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
Creation
* For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
* Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
* New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
-* Recognise creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
+* Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
* Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
* Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
\f
-Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
+Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
* Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
* The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
* See ChangeLog for more details.
+
+\f
+
+Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
+2004, 2005, 2006 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., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
+Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
+\f
+Local variables:
+mode: outline
+paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
+end:
projects / chaz / tar / blobdiff