1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2008-09-24
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
13 * New option --no-auto-compress
15 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
17 * New option --no-null
19 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
21 * Compressed format recognition
23 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
24 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
28 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
33 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
38 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
40 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
42 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
43 of the archive file name.
47 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
49 * New option --hard-dereference
51 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
52 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
54 * New option --checkpoint-action
56 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
57 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
58 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
59 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
60 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
61 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
63 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
65 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
66 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
67 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
70 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
71 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
72 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
75 * The --transform option.
77 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
78 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
80 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
81 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
83 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
84 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
87 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
90 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
92 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
93 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
95 * Incremental archives
97 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
100 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
104 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
106 * New option --exclude-vcs
108 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
109 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
111 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
113 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
121 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
123 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
124 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
125 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
128 * Fix --version output.
130 * Recognition of broken archives.
132 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
133 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
134 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
135 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
137 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
139 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
142 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
144 * Licensed under the GPLv3
146 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
149 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
151 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
152 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
154 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
155 a full dump when both options were given.
157 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
158 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
160 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
162 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
163 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
164 option affects hard link targets as well.
166 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
167 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
170 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
172 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
173 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
176 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
177 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
178 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
179 still added to the archive.
181 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
182 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
183 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
184 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
185 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
186 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
187 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
189 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
190 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
191 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
194 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
196 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
197 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
198 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
200 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
201 members during creation.
204 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
205 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
206 the listing to stderr.
209 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
211 * Incompatible changes
215 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
216 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
220 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
221 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
222 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
223 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
224 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
227 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
228 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
229 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
231 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
232 following command line options:
234 --wildcards use wildcards
235 --anchored patterns match file name start
236 --ignore-case ignore case
237 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
239 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
240 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
242 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
243 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
244 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
246 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
247 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
249 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
250 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
251 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
252 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
254 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
256 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
257 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
261 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
262 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
263 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
265 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
267 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
269 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
270 versions it worked only with --extract.
272 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
273 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
274 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
275 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
276 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
277 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
279 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
280 as well as that about directories.
282 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
283 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
284 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
287 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
288 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
289 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
290 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
291 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
294 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
297 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
301 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
302 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
303 including another -T option.
304 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
305 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
306 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
307 dash, use the --add-file option.
309 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
310 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
312 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
313 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
314 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
316 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
317 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
318 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
321 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
322 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
324 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
325 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
326 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
327 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
329 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
332 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
333 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
336 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
337 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
338 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
339 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
340 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
342 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
343 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
345 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
346 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
347 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
348 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
349 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
350 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
351 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
353 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
354 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
355 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
356 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
358 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
359 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
360 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
361 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
363 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
364 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
365 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
369 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
370 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
371 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
372 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
373 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
374 was not processed correctly.
375 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
377 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
378 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
380 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
381 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
382 (for ustar and v7 formats).
383 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
384 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
385 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
386 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
390 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
392 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
393 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
396 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
398 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
399 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
400 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
402 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
403 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
406 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
407 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
408 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
409 back up. This change fixes the bug.
411 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
414 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
417 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
418 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
420 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
421 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
423 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
424 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
425 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
427 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
429 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
430 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
431 introduced in version 1.14
433 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
434 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
435 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
436 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
437 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
440 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
441 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
442 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
443 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
444 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
445 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
446 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
447 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
448 extracted copy in such cases.
449 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
450 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
451 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
452 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
453 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
454 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
455 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
458 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
460 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
461 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
462 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
463 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
464 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
465 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
466 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
468 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
469 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
470 the previous default behavior.
472 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
473 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
474 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
475 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
478 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
479 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
480 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
481 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
482 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
484 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
485 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
486 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
487 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
488 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
489 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
490 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
492 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
493 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
496 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
497 individual files, as well as on directories.
499 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
500 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
501 option is given to configure.
503 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
504 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
505 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
506 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
507 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
508 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
509 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
510 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
511 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
513 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
514 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
517 * Removed obsolete command line options:
518 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
519 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
520 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
521 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
522 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
523 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
524 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
526 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
527 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
528 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
529 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
534 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
539 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
541 * New option --overwrite-dir.
542 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
543 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
546 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
548 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
551 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
556 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
558 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
561 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
563 * Some bugs were fixed:
565 - hard links to symbolic links
567 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
569 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
570 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
571 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
572 exclude patterns are interpreted.
574 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
575 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
576 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
577 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
578 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
579 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
580 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
581 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
583 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
584 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
585 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
588 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
590 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
591 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
593 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
594 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
597 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
599 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
600 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
601 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
603 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
604 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
606 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
608 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
610 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
612 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
614 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
615 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
617 * New language supported: da.
619 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
620 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
622 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
623 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
625 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
628 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
630 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
631 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
634 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
636 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
637 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
638 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
639 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
640 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
641 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
642 longstanding security problems.
644 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
646 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
647 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
648 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
649 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
650 extracting a new directory.
652 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
653 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
654 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
656 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
657 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
659 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
660 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
661 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
662 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
663 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
664 names have multibyte chars.
666 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
667 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
668 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
669 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
670 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
671 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
672 are also escaped as needed.
674 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
675 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
678 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
680 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
681 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
684 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
686 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
687 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
688 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
691 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
693 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
694 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
695 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
696 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
699 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
701 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
703 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
705 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
707 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
708 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
709 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
710 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
711 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
712 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
713 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
714 and which rejects large files.
716 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
717 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
718 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
719 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
721 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
722 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
723 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
725 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
727 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
730 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
732 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
733 for compatibility with paxutils.
735 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
736 if no explicit operands were given.
738 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
739 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
740 even if they begin with `-'.
742 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
743 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
744 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
745 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
746 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
747 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
750 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
752 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
753 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
754 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
757 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
759 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
760 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
762 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
765 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
766 numeric header field.
769 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
771 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
772 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
773 the original file or directory.
776 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
778 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
780 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
781 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
783 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
786 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
788 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
789 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
790 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
792 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
793 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
794 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
795 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
796 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
797 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
799 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
800 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
801 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
802 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
804 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
805 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
806 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
808 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
810 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
813 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
815 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
818 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
820 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
821 this matches historical practice.
824 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
826 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
827 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
828 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
831 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
833 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
836 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
840 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
842 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
843 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
844 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
845 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
846 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
847 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
848 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
849 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
850 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
851 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
852 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
854 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
857 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
858 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
861 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
862 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
863 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
864 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
867 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
868 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
869 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
870 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
871 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
872 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
875 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
876 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
877 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
878 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
879 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
880 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
881 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
882 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
883 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
886 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
887 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
888 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
889 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
890 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
891 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
892 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
893 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
895 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
897 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
899 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
900 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
901 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
902 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
903 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
905 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
907 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
909 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
910 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
911 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
914 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
916 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
918 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
919 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
920 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
921 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
923 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
925 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
927 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
930 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
932 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
934 * Several Makefile cleanups.
936 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
940 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
941 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
942 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
943 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
944 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
948 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
950 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
951 for it will eventually be removed.
953 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
954 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
956 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
957 after they are added to the archive.
959 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
962 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
963 is being read or written.
965 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
966 omitted from the archive.
968 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
969 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
971 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
972 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
974 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
975 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
976 around to the beginning.
978 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
979 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
980 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
982 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
983 their original values after dumping the file.
985 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
988 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
989 modification and access times.
991 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
992 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
993 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
996 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
998 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
999 +newer-mtime work right.
1001 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1003 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1005 * +volume is now called +label.
1007 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1008 what +exclude used to do.
1010 * Exit status is now correct.
1012 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1014 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1016 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1017 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1018 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1020 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1021 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1022 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1023 all our backups at the FSF.
1025 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1026 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1027 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1029 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1033 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1034 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1036 This file is part of GNU tar.
1038 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1039 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1040 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1043 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1044 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1045 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1046 GNU General Public License for more details.
1048 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1049 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1050 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1051 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1055 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1056 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1057 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1058 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1059 time-stamp-end: "\n"