1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-02-25
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).
15 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
16 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
18 * New command line option `--warning'
20 The `--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
21 particular warning messages during `tar' run. It takes a single
22 argument (a `keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
23 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with `no-', such warning
24 messages are suppressed. For example,
26 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
28 suppresses the output of `A lone zero block' diagnostics, which is
29 normally issued if `archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
31 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
34 * New command line option `--level'
36 The `--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
37 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
38 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
39 `--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
40 the snapshot file if it exists.
42 * Files removed during incremental dumps
44 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
45 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
46 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was gathered
47 during file system scan.
49 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
50 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
53 Otherwise, if the file was gathered during the file system
54 scan, tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
55 and sets the exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
56 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
57 is issued and the exit code remains 0.
59 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
61 Modification times in the ustar header blocks for the
62 extended headers are set to the mtimes of the corresponding archive
63 members. This can be overridden by the
65 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
67 command line option. The STRING is either the number of seconds since
68 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
70 Modification times in the ustar header blocks for the global
71 extended headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
73 This can be overridden by the
75 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
77 command line option. The STRING is either the number of seconds since
78 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
80 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
82 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
83 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
84 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
85 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
86 an existing file, starting with `/' or `.'. In the latter
87 case, the value is replaced with the modification time of that file.
89 * Environment of --to-command script.
91 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
92 the following variables:
94 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
95 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
96 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
97 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
98 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
101 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
102 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
103 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
104 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
105 ** The --remove-files option removes the files only if they were
106 succesfully stored in the archive.
107 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
108 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
112 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
114 * Support for xz compression
116 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
118 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
119 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
120 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
121 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
123 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
125 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
126 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
127 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
129 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
133 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
134 --use-compress-program.
136 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
139 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
141 * New short option -J
143 A shortcut for --lzma.
147 * New option --no-auto-compress
149 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
151 * New option --no-null
153 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
155 * Compressed format recognition
157 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
158 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
162 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
165 * Transformation scope flags
167 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
168 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
171 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
174 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
177 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
179 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
180 `H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
182 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
185 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
187 Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
188 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
189 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
190 can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
192 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
196 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
198 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If detected record size differs from
199 the expected value (either default, or set on the command line), tar
200 always prints a warning if verbosity level is set to 1 or greater,
201 i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
205 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
207 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
209 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
210 of the archive file name.
214 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
216 * New option --hard-dereference
218 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
219 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
221 * New option --checkpoint-action
223 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
224 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
225 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
226 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
227 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
228 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
230 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
232 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
233 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
234 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
237 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
238 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
239 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
240 environment variable.
242 * The --transform option.
244 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
245 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
247 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
248 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
250 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
251 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
254 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
257 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
259 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
260 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
262 * Incremental archives
264 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
267 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
271 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
273 * New option --exclude-vcs
275 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
276 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
278 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
280 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
288 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
290 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
291 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
292 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
295 * Fix --version output.
297 * Recognition of broken archives.
299 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
300 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
301 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
302 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
304 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
306 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
309 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
311 * Licensed under the GPLv3
313 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
316 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
318 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
319 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
321 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
322 a full dump when both options were given.
324 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
325 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
327 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
329 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
330 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
331 option affects hard link targets as well.
333 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
334 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
337 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
339 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
340 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
343 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
344 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
345 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
346 still added to the archive.
348 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
349 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
350 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
351 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
352 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
353 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
354 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
356 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
357 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
358 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
361 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
363 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
364 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
365 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
367 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
368 members during creation.
371 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
372 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
373 the listing to stderr.
376 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
378 * Incompatible changes
382 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
383 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
387 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
388 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
389 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
390 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
391 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
394 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
395 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
396 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
398 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
399 following command line options:
401 --wildcards use wildcards
402 --anchored patterns match file name start
403 --ignore-case ignore case
404 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
406 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
407 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
409 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
410 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
411 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
413 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
414 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
416 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
417 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
418 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
419 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
421 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
423 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
424 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
428 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
429 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
430 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
432 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
434 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
436 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
437 versions it worked only with --extract.
439 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
440 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
441 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
442 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
443 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
444 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
446 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
447 as well as that about directories.
449 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
450 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
451 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
454 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
455 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
456 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
457 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
458 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
461 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
464 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
468 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
469 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
470 including another -T option.
471 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
472 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
473 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
474 dash, use the --add-file option.
476 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
477 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
479 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
480 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
481 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
483 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
484 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
485 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
488 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
489 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
491 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
492 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
493 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
494 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
496 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
499 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
500 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
503 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
504 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
505 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
506 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
507 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
509 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
510 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
512 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
513 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
514 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
515 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
516 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
517 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
518 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
520 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
521 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
522 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
523 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
525 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
526 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
527 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
528 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
530 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
531 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
532 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
536 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
537 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
538 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
539 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
540 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
541 was not processed correctly.
542 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
544 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
545 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
547 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
548 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
549 (for ustar and v7 formats).
550 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
551 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
552 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
553 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
557 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
559 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
560 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
563 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
565 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
566 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
567 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
569 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
570 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
573 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
574 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
575 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
576 back up. This change fixes the bug.
578 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
581 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
584 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
585 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
587 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
588 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
590 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
591 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
592 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
594 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
596 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
597 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
598 introduced in version 1.14
600 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
601 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
602 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
603 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
604 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
607 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
608 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
609 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
610 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
611 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
612 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
613 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
614 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
615 extracted copy in such cases.
616 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
617 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
618 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
619 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
620 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
621 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
622 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
625 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
627 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
628 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
629 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
630 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
631 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
632 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
633 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
635 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
636 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
637 the previous default behavior.
639 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
640 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
641 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
642 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
645 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
646 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
647 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
648 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
649 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
651 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
652 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
653 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
654 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
655 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
656 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
657 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
659 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
660 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
663 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
664 individual files, as well as on directories.
666 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
667 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
668 option is given to configure.
670 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
671 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
672 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
673 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
674 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
675 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
676 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
677 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
678 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
680 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
681 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
684 * Removed obsolete command line options:
685 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
686 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
687 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
688 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
689 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
690 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
691 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
693 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
694 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
695 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
696 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
701 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
706 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
708 * New option --overwrite-dir.
709 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
710 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
713 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
715 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
718 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
723 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
725 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
728 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
730 * Some bugs were fixed:
732 - hard links to symbolic links
734 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
736 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
737 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
738 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
739 exclude patterns are interpreted.
741 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
742 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
743 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
744 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
745 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
746 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
747 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
748 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
750 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
751 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
752 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
755 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
757 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
758 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
760 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
761 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
764 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
766 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
767 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
768 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
770 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
771 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
773 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
775 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
777 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
779 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
781 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
782 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
784 * New language supported: da.
786 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
787 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
789 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
790 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
792 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
795 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
797 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
798 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
801 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
803 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
804 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
805 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
806 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
807 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
808 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
809 longstanding security problems.
811 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
813 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
814 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
815 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
816 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
817 extracting a new directory.
819 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
820 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
821 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
823 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
824 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
826 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
827 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
828 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
829 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
830 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
831 names have multibyte chars.
833 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
834 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
835 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
836 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
837 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
838 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
839 are also escaped as needed.
841 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
842 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
845 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
847 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
848 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
851 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
853 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
854 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
855 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
858 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
860 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
861 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
862 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
863 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
866 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
868 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
870 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
872 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
874 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
875 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
876 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
877 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
878 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
879 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
880 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
881 and which rejects large files.
883 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
884 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
885 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
886 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
888 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
889 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
890 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
892 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
894 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
897 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
899 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
900 for compatibility with paxutils.
902 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
903 if no explicit operands were given.
905 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
906 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
907 even if they begin with `-'.
909 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
910 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
911 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
912 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
913 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
914 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
917 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
919 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
920 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
921 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
924 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
926 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
927 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
929 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
932 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
933 numeric header field.
936 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
938 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
939 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
940 the original file or directory.
943 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
945 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
947 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
948 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
950 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
953 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
955 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
956 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
957 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
959 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
960 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
961 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
962 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
963 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
964 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
966 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
967 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
968 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
969 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
971 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
972 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
973 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
975 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
977 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
980 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
982 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
985 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
987 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
988 this matches historical practice.
991 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
993 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
994 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
995 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
998 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1000 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1003 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1007 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1009 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1010 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1011 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1012 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1013 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1014 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1015 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1016 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1017 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1018 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1019 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1021 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1024 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1025 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1028 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1029 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1030 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1031 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1034 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1035 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1036 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1037 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1038 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
1039 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1042 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1043 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1044 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1045 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1046 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1047 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1048 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1049 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1050 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1053 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1054 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1055 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1056 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1057 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1058 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1059 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1060 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1062 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1064 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1066 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1067 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1068 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1069 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1070 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1072 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1074 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1076 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1077 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1078 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1081 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1083 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1085 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1086 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1087 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1088 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1090 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1092 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1094 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1097 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1099 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1101 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1103 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1107 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1108 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1109 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1110 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1111 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1115 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1117 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
1118 for it will eventually be removed.
1120 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1121 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1123 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1124 after they are added to the archive.
1126 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1129 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1130 is being read or written.
1132 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1133 omitted from the archive.
1135 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1136 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1138 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1139 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1141 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1142 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1143 around to the beginning.
1145 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1146 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1147 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
1149 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1150 their original values after dumping the file.
1152 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1155 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1156 modification and access times.
1158 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1159 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1160 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1163 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1165 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1166 +newer-mtime work right.
1168 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1170 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1172 * +volume is now called +label.
1174 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1175 what +exclude used to do.
1177 * Exit status is now correct.
1179 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1181 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1183 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1184 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1185 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1187 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1188 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1189 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1190 all our backups at the FSF.
1192 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1193 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1194 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1196 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1200 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1201 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1203 This file is part of GNU tar.
1205 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1206 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1207 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1210 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1211 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1212 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1213 GNU General Public License for more details.
1215 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1216 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1217 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1218 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1222 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1223 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1224 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1225 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1226 time-stamp-end: "\n"