1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-09-17
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
5 version 1.23.90 - (Git)
7 * The --full-time option.
9 New command line option `--full-time' instructs tar to output file
10 time stamps to the full resolution.
14 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
16 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
17 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
18 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
19 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
20 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
21 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
23 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
24 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
25 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
26 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
28 ** Symbolic link attributes
30 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
31 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
32 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
33 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
36 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
38 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
39 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
40 invoked as in the example below:
42 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
46 Tar --remove-files failed to remove a directory which contained
47 symlinks to another files within that directory.
49 ** --test-label behavior
51 In case of a mismatch, `tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
52 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
54 The `--verbose' option used with `--test-label' provides additional
57 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
59 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
61 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
62 matches the actual volume label.
64 ** --label used with --update
66 The `--label' option can be used with `--update' to prevent accidental
69 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
71 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
73 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
75 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
76 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
78 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
81 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
83 * Record size autodetection
85 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
86 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
87 to regular files and pipes).
91 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
92 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
94 * New command line option `--warning'
96 The `--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
97 particular warning messages during `tar' run. It takes a single
98 argument (a `keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
99 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with `no-', such warning
100 messages are suppressed. For example,
102 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
104 suppresses the output of `A lone zero block' diagnostics, which is
105 normally issued if `archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
107 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
110 * New command line option `--level'
112 The `--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
113 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
114 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
115 `--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
116 the snapshot file if it exists.
118 * Files removed during incremental dumps
120 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
121 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
122 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
123 during file system scan.
125 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
126 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
129 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
130 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
131 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
132 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
133 is issued and exit code remains 0.
135 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
137 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
138 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
139 can be overridden by the
141 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
143 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
144 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
146 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
147 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
149 This can be overridden by the
151 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
153 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
154 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
156 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
158 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
159 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
160 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
161 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
162 an existing file, starting with `/' or `.'. In the latter
163 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
165 * Environment of --to-command script.
167 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
168 the following variables:
170 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
171 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
172 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
173 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
174 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
177 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
178 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
179 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
180 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
181 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
182 succesfully stored in the archive.
183 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
184 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
186 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
189 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
191 * Support for xz compression
193 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
195 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
196 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
197 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
198 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
200 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
202 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
203 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
204 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
206 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
210 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
211 --use-compress-program.
213 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
216 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
218 * New short option -J
220 A shortcut for --lzma.
224 * New option --no-auto-compress
226 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
228 * New option --no-null
230 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
232 * Compressed format recognition
234 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
235 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
239 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
242 * Transformation scope flags
244 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
245 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
248 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
251 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
254 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
256 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
257 `H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
259 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
262 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
264 Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
265 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
266 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
267 can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
269 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
273 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
275 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
276 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
277 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
278 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
282 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
284 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
286 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
287 of the archive file name.
291 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
293 * New option --hard-dereference
295 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
296 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
298 * New option --checkpoint-action
300 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
301 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
302 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
303 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
304 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
305 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
307 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
309 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
310 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
311 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
314 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
315 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
316 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
317 environment variable.
319 * The --transform option.
321 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
322 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
324 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
325 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
327 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
328 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
331 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
334 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
336 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
337 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
339 * Incremental archives
341 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
344 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
348 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
350 * New option --exclude-vcs
352 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
353 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
355 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
357 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
365 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
367 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
368 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
369 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
372 * Fix --version output.
374 * Recognition of broken archives.
376 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
377 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
378 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
379 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
381 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
383 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
386 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
388 * Licensed under the GPLv3
390 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
393 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
395 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
396 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
398 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
399 a full dump when both options were given.
401 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
402 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
404 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
406 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
407 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
408 option affects hard link targets as well.
410 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
411 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
414 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
416 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
417 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
420 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
421 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
422 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
423 still added to the archive.
425 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
426 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
427 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
428 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
429 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
430 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
431 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
433 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
434 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
435 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
438 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
440 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
441 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
442 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
444 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
445 members during creation.
448 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
449 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
450 the listing to stderr.
453 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
455 * Incompatible changes
459 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
460 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
464 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
465 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
466 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
467 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
468 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
471 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
472 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
473 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
475 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
476 following command line options:
478 --wildcards use wildcards
479 --anchored patterns match file name start
480 --ignore-case ignore case
481 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
483 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
484 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
486 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
487 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
488 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
490 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
491 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
493 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
494 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
495 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
496 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
498 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
500 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
501 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
505 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
506 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
507 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
509 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
511 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
513 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
514 versions it worked only with --extract.
516 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
517 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
518 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
519 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
520 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
521 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
523 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
524 as well as that about directories.
526 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
527 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
528 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
531 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
532 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
533 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
534 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
535 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
538 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
541 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
545 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
546 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
547 including another -T option.
548 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
549 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
550 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
551 dash, use the --add-file option.
553 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
554 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
556 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
557 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
558 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
560 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
561 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
562 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
565 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
566 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
568 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
569 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
570 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
571 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
573 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
576 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
577 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
580 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
581 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
582 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
583 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
584 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
586 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
587 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
589 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
590 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
591 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
592 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
593 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
594 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
595 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
597 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
598 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
599 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
600 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
602 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
603 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
604 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
605 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
607 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
608 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
609 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
613 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
614 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
615 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
616 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
617 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
618 was not processed correctly.
619 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
621 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
622 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
624 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
625 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
626 (for ustar and v7 formats).
627 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
628 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
629 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
630 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
634 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
636 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
637 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
640 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
642 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
643 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
644 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
646 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
647 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
650 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
651 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
652 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
653 back up. This change fixes the bug.
655 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
658 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
661 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
662 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
664 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
665 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
667 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
668 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
669 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
671 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
673 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
674 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
675 introduced in version 1.14
677 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
678 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
679 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
680 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
681 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
684 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
685 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
686 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
687 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
688 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
689 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
690 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
691 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
692 extracted copy in such cases.
693 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
694 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
695 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
696 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
697 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
698 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
699 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
702 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
704 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
705 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
706 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
707 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
708 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
709 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
710 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
712 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
713 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
714 the previous default behavior.
716 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
717 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
718 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
719 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
722 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
723 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
724 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
725 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
726 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
728 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
729 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
730 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
731 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
732 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
733 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
734 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
736 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
737 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
740 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
741 individual files, as well as on directories.
743 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
744 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
745 option is given to configure.
747 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
748 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
749 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
750 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
751 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
752 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
753 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
754 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
755 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
757 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
758 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
761 * Removed obsolete command line options:
762 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
763 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
764 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
765 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
766 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
767 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
768 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
770 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
771 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
772 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
773 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
778 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
783 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
785 * New option --overwrite-dir.
786 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
787 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
790 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
792 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
795 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
800 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
802 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
805 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
807 * Some bugs were fixed:
809 - hard links to symbolic links
811 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
813 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
814 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
815 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
816 exclude patterns are interpreted.
818 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
819 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
820 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
821 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
822 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
823 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
824 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
825 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
827 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
828 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
829 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
832 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
834 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
835 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
837 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
838 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
841 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
843 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
844 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
845 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
847 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
848 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
850 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
852 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
854 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
856 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
858 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
859 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
861 * New language supported: da.
863 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
864 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
866 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
867 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
869 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
872 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
874 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
875 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
878 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
880 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
881 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
882 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
883 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
884 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
885 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
886 longstanding security problems.
888 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
890 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
891 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
892 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
893 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
894 extracting a new directory.
896 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
897 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
898 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
900 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
901 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
903 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
904 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
905 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
906 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
907 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
908 names have multibyte chars.
910 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
911 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
912 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
913 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
914 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
915 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
916 are also escaped as needed.
918 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
919 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
922 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
924 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
925 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
928 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
930 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
931 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
932 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
935 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
937 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
938 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
939 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
940 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
943 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
945 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
947 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
949 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
951 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
952 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
953 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
954 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
955 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
956 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
957 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
958 and which rejects large files.
960 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
961 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
962 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
963 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
965 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
966 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
967 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
969 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
971 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
974 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
976 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
977 for compatibility with paxutils.
979 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
980 if no explicit operands were given.
982 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
983 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
984 even if they begin with `-'.
986 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
987 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
988 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
989 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
990 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
991 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
994 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
996 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
997 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
998 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1001 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1003 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1004 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
1006 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1009 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1010 numeric header field.
1013 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1015 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
1016 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1017 the original file or directory.
1020 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1022 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1024 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
1025 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1027 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1030 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1032 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1033 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1034 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1036 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1037 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1038 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1039 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1040 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1041 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1043 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1044 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1045 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1046 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1048 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1049 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1050 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1052 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1054 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1057 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1059 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1062 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1064 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1065 this matches historical practice.
1068 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1070 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1071 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1072 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1075 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1077 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1080 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1084 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1086 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1087 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1088 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1089 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1090 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1091 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1092 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1093 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1094 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1095 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1096 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1098 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1101 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1102 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1105 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1106 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1107 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1108 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1111 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1112 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1113 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1114 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1115 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
1116 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1119 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1120 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1121 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1122 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1123 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1124 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1125 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1126 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1127 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1130 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1131 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1132 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1133 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1134 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1135 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1136 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1137 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1139 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1141 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1143 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1144 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1145 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1146 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1147 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1149 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1151 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1153 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1154 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1155 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1158 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1160 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1162 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1163 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1164 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1165 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1167 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1169 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1171 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1174 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1176 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1178 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1180 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1184 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1185 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1186 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1187 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1188 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1192 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1194 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
1195 for it will eventually be removed.
1197 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1198 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1200 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1201 after they are added to the archive.
1203 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1206 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1207 is being read or written.
1209 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1210 omitted from the archive.
1212 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1213 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1215 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1216 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1218 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1219 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1220 around to the beginning.
1222 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1223 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1224 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
1226 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1227 their original values after dumping the file.
1229 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1232 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1233 modification and access times.
1235 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1236 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1237 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1240 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1242 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1243 +newer-mtime work right.
1245 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1247 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1249 * +volume is now called +label.
1251 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1252 what +exclude used to do.
1254 * Exit status is now correct.
1256 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1258 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1260 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1261 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1262 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1264 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1265 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1266 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1267 all our backups at the FSF.
1269 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1270 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1271 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1273 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1277 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1278 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1280 This file is part of GNU tar.
1282 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1283 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1284 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1287 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1288 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1289 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1290 GNU General Public License for more details.
1292 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1293 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1294 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1295 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1299 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1300 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1301 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1302 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1303 time-stamp-end: "\n"