-GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes.
-Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
-2004, 2005
-Free Software Foundation, Inc.
-See the end for copying conditions.
-
+GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-09-12
Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
+
+\f
+version 1.23.90 - (Git)
+
+* The --full-time option.
+
+New command line option `--full-time' instructs tar to output file
+time stamps to the full resolution.
+
+* Bugfixes.
+
+** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
+
+Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
+modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
+maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
+file descriptors before, but it gracefully adjusts to system limits on
+the number of file descriptors. The new checks are implemented via
+the openat, dirfd, fdopendir, fstatat, and readlinkat calls
+standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
+not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
+some cost in efficiency and reliability.
+
+** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
+
+When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
+"write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
+invoked as in the example below:
+
+ tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
+
+** --remove-files
+
+Tar --remove-files failed to remove a directory which contained
+symlinks to another files within that directory.
+
+** --test-label behavior
+
+In case of a mismatch, `tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
+not 2 as it did in previous versions.
+
+The `--verbose' option used with `--test-label' provides additional
+diagnostics.
+
+Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
+
+ tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
+
+In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
+matches the actual volume label.
+
+** --label used with --update
+
+The `--label' option can be used with `--update' to prevent accidental
+update of an archive:
+
+ tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
+
+This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
+
+** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
+
+Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
+-L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
+
+** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
+
+\f
+version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
+
+* Record size autodetection
+
+When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
+reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
+to regular files and pipes).
+
+* Seekable archives
+
+When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
+on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
+
+* New command line option `--warning'
+
+The `--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
+particular warning messages during `tar' run. It takes a single
+argument (a `keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
+to affect. If the argument is prefixed with `no-', such warning
+messages are suppressed. For example,
+
+ tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
+
+suppresses the output of `A lone zero block' diagnostics, which is
+normally issued if `archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
+
+See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
+detailed discussion.
+
+* New command line option `--level'
+
+The `--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
+is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
+options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
+`--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
+the snapshot file if it exists.
+
+* Files removed during incremental dumps
+
+If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
+in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
+was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
+during file system scan.
+
+If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
+issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
+fatal error.
+
+Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
+tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
+and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
+If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
+is issued and exit code remains 0.
+
+* Modification times of PAX extended headers.
+
+Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
+are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
+can be overridden by the
+
+ --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
+
+command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
+the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
+
+Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
+headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
+
+This can be overridden by the
+
+ --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
+
+command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
+the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
+
+* Time references in --pax-option argument.
+
+Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
+of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
+braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
+chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
+an existing file, starting with `/' or `.'. In the latter
+case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
+
+* Environment of --to-command script.
+
+The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
+the following variables:
+
+ TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
+ TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
+ TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
+ TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
+ TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
+
+* Bugfixes
+** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
+** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
+** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
+** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
+** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
+succesfully stored in the archive.
+** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
+** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
+format).
+** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
+
+\f
+version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
+
+* Support for xz compression
+
+Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
+
+ 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
+ 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
+ 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
+ auto-compress option (-a) is used.
+
+Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
+
+ 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
+ 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
+ 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
+
+* Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
+
+* New option -I
+
+The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
+--use-compress-program.
+
+* The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
+
+\f
+version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
+
+* New short option -J
+
+A shortcut for --lzma.
+
+* New option --lzop
+
+* New option --no-auto-compress
+
+Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
+
+* New option --no-null
+
+Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
+
+* Compressed format recognition
+
+If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
+back to using archive suffix to determine it.
+
+* VCS support.
+
+Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
+Mercurial and Darcs.
+
+* Transformation scope flags
+
+Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
+control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
+
+ - r
+ Apply transformation to regular archive members.
+
+ - s
+ Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
+
+ - h
+ Apply transformation to hard link targets.
+
+Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
+`H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
+
+The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
+e.g.:
+
+ tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
+
+Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
+both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
+links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
+can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
+
+ tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
+
+* Bugfixes
+
+** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
+is fixed.
+** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
+the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
+command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
+to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
+
+\f
+
+version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
+
+* New option --auto-compress (-a)
+
+With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
+of the archive file name.
+
+* New option --lzma
+
+Selects LZMA compression algorithm
+
+* New option --hard-dereference
+
+During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
+they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
+
+* New option --checkpoint-action
+
+This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
+checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
+echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
+of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
+executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
+chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
+
+* New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
+
+The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
+preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
+creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
+LVM snapshot).
+
+The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
+the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
+`--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
+environment variable.
+
+* The --transform option.
+
+Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
+The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
+
+The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
+expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
+
+Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
+during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
+during extraction.
+
+For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
+Names".
+
+* Info (end-of-volume) scripts
+
+The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
+checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
+
+* Incremental archives
+
+Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
+
+* Bugfixes.
+** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
+archives.
+
+\f
+version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
+
+* New option --exclude-vcs
+
+Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
+control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
+
+* --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
+
+The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
+
+ --exclude-caches
+ --exclude-caches-all
+ --exclude-tag
+ --exclude-tag-all
+ --exclude-tag-under
+
+* Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
+
+Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
+records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
+contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
+settings.
+
+* Fix --version output.
+
+* Recognition of broken archives.
+
+When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
+-t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
+code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
+'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
+
+* Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
+
+* Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
+
+\f
+version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
+
+* Licensed under the GPLv3
+
+* Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
+
+\f
+version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
+
+* Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
+ sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
+
+* Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
+ a full dump when both options were given.
+
+* Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
+ even though all requested members has already been extracted.
+
+* Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
+
+In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
+option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
+option affects hard link targets as well.
+
+* End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
+ it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
+
+\f
+version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
+
+* New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
+ files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
+ be archived.
+
+* The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
+ CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
+ directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
+ still added to the archive.
+
+* Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
+ This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
+ Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
+ <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
+ We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
+ records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
+ decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
+
+* Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
+ files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
+ running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
+
+\f
+version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
+
+* After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
+changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
+error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
+
+* New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
+members during creation.
+
+* Bug fixes
+** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
+** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
+the listing to stderr.
+
+\f
+version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
+
+* Incompatible changes
+
+** Globbing
+
+Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
+extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
+
+ tar xf foo.tar '*.c'
+
+would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
+was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
+implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
+no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
+is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
+named '*.c'.
+
+To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
+If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
+add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
+
+The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
+following command line options:
+
+ --wildcards use wildcards
+ --anchored patterns match file name start
+ --ignore-case ignore case
+ --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
+
+Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
+effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
+
+These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
+command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
+and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
+
+ 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
+ 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
+
+The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
+changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
+to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
+case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
+
+ tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
+
+** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
+with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
+
+* New features
+
+** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
+in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
+sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
+
+ tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
+
+will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
+
+** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
+versions it worked only with --extract.
+
+** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
+or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
+1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
+member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
+removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
+for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
+
+** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
+as well as that about directories.
+
+** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
+of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
+starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
+checkpoints.
+
+** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
+understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
+given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
+is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
+argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
+
+* Bug fixes
+** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
+
\f
-version 1.15.2 (CVS version -- unreleased)
+version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
* New features
-* Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
+** 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
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
+** 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.
+** 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.
+** 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,
+** 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.
-* Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
+** 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,
+** 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.
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.
+** Compare mode (tar d) hung 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
\f
-Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003
-Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
+2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 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)
+the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
any later version.
GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
Local variables:
mode: outline
paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
+eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
+time-stamp-start: "changes. "
+time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
+time-stamp-end: "\n"
end:
projects / chaz / tar / blobdiff