1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2007-09-26
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
7 * New option --exclude-vcs
9 Excludes directories and files, internal to some widely used version
10 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
12 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
14 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
22 * Fix --version output.
24 * Recognition of broken archive.
26 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
27 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
28 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
29 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
31 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
34 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
36 * Licensed under the GPLv3
38 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
41 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
43 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
44 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
46 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
47 a full dump when both options were given.
49 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
50 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
52 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
54 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
55 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
56 option affects hard link targets as well.
58 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
59 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
62 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
64 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
65 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
68 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
69 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
70 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
71 still added to the archive.
73 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
74 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
75 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
76 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
77 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
78 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
79 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
81 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
82 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
83 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
86 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
88 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
89 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
90 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
92 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
93 members during creation.
96 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
97 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
98 the listing to stderr.
101 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
103 * Incompatible changes
107 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
108 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
112 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
113 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
114 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
115 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
116 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
119 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
120 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
121 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
123 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
124 following command line options:
126 --wildcards use wildcards
127 --anchored patterns match file name start
128 --ignore-case ignore case
129 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
131 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
132 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
134 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
135 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
136 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
138 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
139 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
141 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
142 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
143 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
144 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
146 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
148 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
149 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
153 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
154 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
155 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
157 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
159 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
161 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
162 versions it worked only with --extract.
164 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
165 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
166 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
167 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
168 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
169 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
171 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
172 as well as that about directories.
174 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
175 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
176 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
179 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
180 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
181 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
182 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
183 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
186 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
189 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
193 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
194 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
195 including another -T option.
196 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
197 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
198 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
199 dash, use the --add-file option.
201 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
202 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
204 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
205 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
206 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
208 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
209 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
210 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
213 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
214 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
216 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
217 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
218 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
219 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
221 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
224 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
225 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
228 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
229 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
230 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
231 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
232 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
234 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
235 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
237 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
238 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
239 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
240 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
241 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
242 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
243 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
245 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
246 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
247 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
248 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
250 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
251 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
252 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
253 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
255 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
256 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
257 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
261 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
262 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
263 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
264 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
265 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
266 was not processed correctly.
267 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
269 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
270 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
272 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
273 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
274 (for ustar and v7 formats).
275 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
276 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
277 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
278 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
282 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
284 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
285 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
288 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
290 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
291 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
292 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
294 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
295 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
298 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
299 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
300 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
301 back up. This change fixes the bug.
303 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
306 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
309 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
310 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
312 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
313 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
315 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
316 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
317 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
319 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
321 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
322 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
323 introduced in version 1.14
325 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
326 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
327 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
328 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
329 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
332 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
333 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
334 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
335 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
336 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
337 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
338 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
339 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
340 extracted copy in such cases.
341 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
342 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
343 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
344 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
345 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
346 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
347 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
350 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
352 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
353 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
354 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
355 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
356 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
357 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
358 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
360 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
361 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
362 the previous default behavior.
364 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
365 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
366 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
367 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
370 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
371 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
372 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
373 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
374 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
376 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
377 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
378 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
379 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
380 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
381 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
382 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
384 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
385 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
388 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
389 individual files, as well as on directories.
391 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
392 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
393 option is given to configure.
395 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
396 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
397 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
398 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
399 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
400 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
401 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
402 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
403 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
405 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
406 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
409 * Removed obsolete command line options:
410 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
411 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
412 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
413 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
414 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
415 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
416 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
418 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
419 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
420 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
421 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
426 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
431 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
433 * New option --overwrite-dir.
434 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
435 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
438 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
440 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
443 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
448 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
450 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
453 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
455 * Some bugs were fixed:
457 - hard links to symbolic links
459 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
461 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
462 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
463 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
464 exclude patterns are interpreted.
466 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
467 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
468 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
469 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
470 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
471 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
472 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
473 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
475 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
476 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
477 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
480 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
482 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
483 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
485 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
486 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
489 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
491 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
492 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
493 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
495 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
496 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
498 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
500 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
502 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
504 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
506 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
507 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
509 * New language supported: da.
511 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
512 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
514 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
515 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
517 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
520 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
522 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
523 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
526 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
528 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
529 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
530 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
531 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
532 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
533 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
534 longstanding security problems.
536 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
538 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
539 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
540 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
541 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
542 extracting a new directory.
544 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
545 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
546 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
548 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
549 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
551 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
552 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
553 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
554 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
555 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
556 names have multibyte chars.
558 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
559 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
560 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
561 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
562 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
563 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
564 are also escaped as needed.
566 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
567 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
570 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
572 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
573 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
576 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
578 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
579 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
580 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
583 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
585 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
586 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
587 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
588 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
591 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
593 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
595 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
597 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
599 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
600 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
601 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
602 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
603 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
604 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
605 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
606 and which rejects large files.
608 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
609 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
610 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
611 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
613 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
614 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
615 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
617 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
619 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
622 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
624 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
625 for compatibility with paxutils.
627 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
628 if no explicit operands were given.
630 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
631 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
632 even if they begin with `-'.
634 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
635 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
636 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
637 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
638 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
639 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
642 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
644 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
645 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
646 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
649 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
651 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
652 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
654 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
657 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
658 numeric header field.
661 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
663 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
664 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
665 the original file or directory.
668 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
670 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
672 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
673 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
675 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
678 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
680 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
681 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
682 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
684 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
685 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
686 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
687 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
688 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
689 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
691 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
692 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
693 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
694 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
696 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
697 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
698 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
700 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
702 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
705 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
707 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
710 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
712 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
713 this matches historical practice.
716 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
718 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
719 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
720 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
723 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
725 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
728 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
732 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
734 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
735 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
736 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
737 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
738 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
739 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
740 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
741 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
742 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
743 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
744 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
746 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
749 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
750 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
753 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
754 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
755 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
756 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
759 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
760 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
761 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
762 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
763 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
764 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
767 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
768 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
769 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
770 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
771 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
772 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
773 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
774 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
775 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
778 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
779 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
780 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
781 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
782 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
783 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
784 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
785 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
787 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
789 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
791 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
792 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
793 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
794 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
795 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
797 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
799 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
801 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
802 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
803 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
806 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
808 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
810 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
811 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
812 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
813 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
815 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
817 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
819 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
822 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
824 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
826 * Several Makefile cleanups.
828 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
832 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
833 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
834 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
835 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
836 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
840 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
842 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
843 for it will eventually be removed.
845 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
846 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
848 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
849 after they are added to the archive.
851 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
854 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
855 is being read or written.
857 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
858 omitted from the archive.
860 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
861 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
863 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
864 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
866 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
867 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
868 around to the beginning.
870 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
871 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
872 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
874 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
875 their original values after dumping the file.
877 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
880 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
881 modification and access times.
883 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
884 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
885 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
888 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
890 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
891 +newer-mtime work right.
893 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
895 * Sparse files now work correctly.
897 * +volume is now called +label.
899 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
900 what +exclude used to do.
902 * Exit status is now correct.
904 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
906 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
908 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
909 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
910 point instead of waiting for a write error.
912 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
913 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
914 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
915 all our backups at the FSF.
917 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
918 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
919 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
921 * See ChangeLog for more details.
925 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
926 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
928 This file is part of GNU tar.
930 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
931 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
932 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
935 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
936 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
937 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
938 GNU General Public License for more details.
940 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
941 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
942 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
943 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
947 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
948 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
949 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
950 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"