1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-03-28
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
6 * The --full-time option.
8 New command line option `--full-time' instructs tar to output file
9 time stamps to the full resolution.
13 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
15 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
16 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
17 invoked as in the example below:
19 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
23 Tar --remove-files failed to remove a directory which contained
24 symlinks to another files within that directory.
26 ** --test-label behavior
28 In case of a mismatch, `tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
29 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
31 The `--verbose' option used with `--test-label' provides additional
34 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
36 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
38 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
39 matches the actual volume label.
41 ** --label used with --update
43 The `--label' option can be used with `--update' to prevent accidental
46 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
48 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
50 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
53 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
55 * Record size autodetection
57 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
58 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
59 to regular files and pipes).
63 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
64 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
66 * New command line option `--warning'
68 The `--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
69 particular warning messages during `tar' run. It takes a single
70 argument (a `keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
71 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with `no-', such warning
72 messages are suppressed. For example,
74 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
76 suppresses the output of `A lone zero block' diagnostics, which is
77 normally issued if `archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
79 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
82 * New command line option `--level'
84 The `--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
85 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
86 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
87 `--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
88 the snapshot file if it exists.
90 * Files removed during incremental dumps
92 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
93 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
94 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
95 during file system scan.
97 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
98 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
101 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
102 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
103 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
104 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
105 is issued and exit code remains 0.
107 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
109 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
110 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
111 can be overridden by the
113 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
115 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
116 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
118 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
119 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
121 This can be overridden by the
123 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
125 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
126 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
128 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
130 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
131 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
132 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
133 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
134 an existing file, starting with `/' or `.'. In the latter
135 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
137 * Environment of --to-command script.
139 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
140 the following variables:
142 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
143 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
144 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
145 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
146 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
149 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
150 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
151 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
152 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
153 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
154 succesfully stored in the archive.
155 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
156 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
158 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
161 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
163 * Support for xz compression
165 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
167 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
168 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
169 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
170 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
172 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
174 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
175 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
176 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
178 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
182 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
183 --use-compress-program.
185 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
188 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
190 * New short option -J
192 A shortcut for --lzma.
196 * New option --no-auto-compress
198 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
200 * New option --no-null
202 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
204 * Compressed format recognition
206 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
207 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
211 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
214 * Transformation scope flags
216 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
217 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
220 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
223 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
226 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
228 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
229 `H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
231 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
234 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
236 Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
237 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
238 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
239 can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
241 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
245 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
247 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
248 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
249 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
250 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
254 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
256 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
258 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
259 of the archive file name.
263 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
265 * New option --hard-dereference
267 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
268 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
270 * New option --checkpoint-action
272 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
273 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
274 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
275 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
276 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
277 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
279 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
281 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
282 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
283 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
286 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
287 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
288 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
289 environment variable.
291 * The --transform option.
293 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
294 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
296 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
297 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
299 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
300 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
303 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
306 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
308 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
309 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
311 * Incremental archives
313 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
316 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
320 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
322 * New option --exclude-vcs
324 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
325 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
327 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
329 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
337 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
339 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
340 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
341 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
344 * Fix --version output.
346 * Recognition of broken archives.
348 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
349 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
350 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
351 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
353 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
355 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
358 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
360 * Licensed under the GPLv3
362 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
365 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
367 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
368 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
370 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
371 a full dump when both options were given.
373 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
374 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
376 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
378 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
379 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
380 option affects hard link targets as well.
382 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
383 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
386 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
388 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
389 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
392 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
393 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
394 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
395 still added to the archive.
397 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
398 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
399 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
400 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
401 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
402 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
403 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
405 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
406 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
407 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
410 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
412 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
413 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
414 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
416 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
417 members during creation.
420 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
421 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
422 the listing to stderr.
425 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
427 * Incompatible changes
431 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
432 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
436 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
437 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
438 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
439 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
440 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
443 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
444 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
445 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
447 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
448 following command line options:
450 --wildcards use wildcards
451 --anchored patterns match file name start
452 --ignore-case ignore case
453 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
455 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
456 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
458 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
459 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
460 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
462 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
463 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
465 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
466 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
467 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
468 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
470 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
472 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
473 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
477 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
478 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
479 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
481 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
483 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
485 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
486 versions it worked only with --extract.
488 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
489 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
490 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
491 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
492 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
493 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
495 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
496 as well as that about directories.
498 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
499 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
500 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
503 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
504 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
505 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
506 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
507 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
510 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
513 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
517 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
518 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
519 including another -T option.
520 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
521 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
522 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
523 dash, use the --add-file option.
525 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
526 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
528 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
529 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
530 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
532 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
533 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
534 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
537 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
538 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
540 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
541 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
542 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
543 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
545 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
548 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
549 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
552 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
553 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
554 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
555 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
556 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
558 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
559 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
561 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
562 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
563 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
564 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
565 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
566 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
567 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
569 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
570 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
571 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
572 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
574 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
575 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
576 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
577 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
579 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
580 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
581 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
585 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
586 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
587 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
588 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
589 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
590 was not processed correctly.
591 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
593 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
594 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
596 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
597 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
598 (for ustar and v7 formats).
599 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
600 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
601 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
602 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
606 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
608 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
609 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
612 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
614 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
615 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
616 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
618 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
619 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
622 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
623 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
624 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
625 back up. This change fixes the bug.
627 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
630 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
633 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
634 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
636 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
637 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
639 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
640 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
641 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
643 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
645 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
646 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
647 introduced in version 1.14
649 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
650 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
651 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
652 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
653 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
656 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
657 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
658 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
659 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
660 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
661 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
662 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
663 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
664 extracted copy in such cases.
665 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
666 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
667 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
668 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
669 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
670 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
671 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
674 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
676 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
677 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
678 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
679 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
680 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
681 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
682 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
684 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
685 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
686 the previous default behavior.
688 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
689 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
690 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
691 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
694 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
695 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
696 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
697 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
698 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
700 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
701 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
702 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
703 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
704 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
705 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
706 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
708 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
709 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
712 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
713 individual files, as well as on directories.
715 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
716 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
717 option is given to configure.
719 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
720 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
721 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
722 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
723 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
724 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
725 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
726 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
727 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
729 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
730 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
733 * Removed obsolete command line options:
734 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
735 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
736 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
737 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
738 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
739 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
740 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
742 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
743 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
744 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
745 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
750 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
755 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
757 * New option --overwrite-dir.
758 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
759 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
762 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
764 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
767 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
772 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
774 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
777 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
779 * Some bugs were fixed:
781 - hard links to symbolic links
783 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
785 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
786 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
787 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
788 exclude patterns are interpreted.
790 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
791 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
792 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
793 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
794 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
795 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
796 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
797 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
799 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
800 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
801 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
804 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
806 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
807 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
809 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
810 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
813 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
815 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
816 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
817 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
819 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
820 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
822 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
824 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
826 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
828 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
830 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
831 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
833 * New language supported: da.
835 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
836 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
838 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
839 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
841 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
844 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
846 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
847 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
850 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
852 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
853 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
854 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
855 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
856 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
857 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
858 longstanding security problems.
860 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
862 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
863 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
864 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
865 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
866 extracting a new directory.
868 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
869 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
870 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
872 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
873 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
875 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
876 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
877 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
878 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
879 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
880 names have multibyte chars.
882 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
883 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
884 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
885 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
886 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
887 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
888 are also escaped as needed.
890 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
891 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
894 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
896 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
897 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
900 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
902 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
903 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
904 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
907 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
909 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
910 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
911 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
912 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
915 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
917 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
919 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
921 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
923 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
924 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
925 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
926 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
927 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
928 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
929 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
930 and which rejects large files.
932 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
933 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
934 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
935 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
937 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
938 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
939 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
941 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
943 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
946 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
948 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
949 for compatibility with paxutils.
951 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
952 if no explicit operands were given.
954 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
955 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
956 even if they begin with `-'.
958 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
959 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
960 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
961 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
962 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
963 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
966 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
968 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
969 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
970 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
973 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
975 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
976 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
978 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
981 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
982 numeric header field.
985 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
987 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
988 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
989 the original file or directory.
992 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
994 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
996 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
997 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
999 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1002 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1004 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1005 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1006 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1008 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1009 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1010 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1011 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1012 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1013 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1015 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1016 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1017 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1018 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1020 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1021 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1022 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1024 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1026 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1029 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1031 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1034 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1036 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1037 this matches historical practice.
1040 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1042 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1043 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1044 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1047 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1049 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1052 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1056 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1058 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1059 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1060 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1061 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1062 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1063 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1064 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1065 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1066 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1067 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1068 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1070 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1073 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1074 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1077 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1078 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1079 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1080 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1083 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1084 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1085 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1086 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1087 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
1088 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1091 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1092 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1093 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1094 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1095 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1096 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1097 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1098 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1099 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1102 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1103 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1104 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1105 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1106 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1107 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1108 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1109 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1111 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1113 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1115 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1116 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1117 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1118 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1119 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1121 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1123 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1125 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1126 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1127 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1130 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1132 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1134 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1135 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1136 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1137 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1139 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1141 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1143 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1146 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1148 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1150 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1152 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1156 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1157 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1158 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1159 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1160 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1164 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1166 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
1167 for it will eventually be removed.
1169 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1170 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1172 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1173 after they are added to the archive.
1175 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1178 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1179 is being read or written.
1181 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1182 omitted from the archive.
1184 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1185 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1187 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1188 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1190 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1191 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1192 around to the beginning.
1194 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1195 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1196 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
1198 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1199 their original values after dumping the file.
1201 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1204 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1205 modification and access times.
1207 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1208 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1209 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1212 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1214 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1215 +newer-mtime work right.
1217 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1219 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1221 * +volume is now called +label.
1223 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1224 what +exclude used to do.
1226 * Exit status is now correct.
1228 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1230 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1232 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1233 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1234 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1236 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1237 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1238 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1239 all our backups at the FSF.
1241 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1242 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1243 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1245 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1249 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1250 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1252 This file is part of GNU tar.
1254 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1255 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1256 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1259 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1260 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1261 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1262 GNU General Public License for more details.
1264 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1265 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1266 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1267 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1271 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1272 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1273 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1274 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1275 time-stamp-end: "\n"