1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes.
2 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004
3 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end for copying conditions.
6 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
8 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
10 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
11 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
14 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
16 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
17 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
18 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
20 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
21 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
24 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
25 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
26 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
27 back up. This change fixes the bug.
29 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
32 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
35 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
36 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
38 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
39 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
41 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
42 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
43 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
45 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
47 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
48 the `rmt' utility. This supercedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
49 introduced in version 1.14
51 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
52 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
53 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
54 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
55 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
58 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
59 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
60 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
61 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
62 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
63 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
64 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
65 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
66 extracted copy in such cases.
67 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
68 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
69 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
70 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
71 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
72 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
73 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
76 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
78 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
79 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
80 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
81 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
82 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
83 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
84 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
86 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
87 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
88 the previous default behavior.
90 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
91 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
92 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
93 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
96 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
97 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
98 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
99 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
100 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
102 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
103 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
104 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
105 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
106 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
107 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
108 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
110 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
111 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
114 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
115 individual files, as well as on directories.
117 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
118 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
119 option is given to configure.
121 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
122 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
123 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
124 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
125 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
126 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
127 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
128 the full path name of the utility, e.g. ./configure
129 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
131 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
132 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
135 * Removed obsolete command line options:
136 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
137 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
138 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
139 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
140 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
141 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
142 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
144 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
145 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
146 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
147 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
152 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
157 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
159 * New option --overwrite-dir.
160 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
161 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
164 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
166 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
169 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
174 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
176 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
179 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
181 * Some bugs were fixed:
183 - hard links to symbolic links
185 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
187 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
188 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
189 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
190 exclude patterns are interpreted.
192 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
193 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
194 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
195 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
196 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
197 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
198 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
199 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
201 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
202 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
203 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
206 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
208 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
209 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
211 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
212 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
215 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
217 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
218 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
219 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
221 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
222 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
224 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
226 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
228 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
230 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
232 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
233 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
235 * New language supported: da.
237 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
238 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
240 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
241 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
243 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
246 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
248 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
249 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
252 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
254 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
255 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
256 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
257 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
258 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
259 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
260 longstanding security problems.
262 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
264 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
265 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
266 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
267 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
268 extracting a new directory.
270 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
271 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
272 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
274 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g. UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
275 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
277 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
278 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
279 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
280 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
281 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
282 names have multibyte chars.
284 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
285 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
286 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
287 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
288 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
289 Terminating characters (e.g. close-quote, colon, newline)
290 are also escaped as needed.
292 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
293 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
296 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
298 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
299 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
302 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
304 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
305 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
306 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
309 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
311 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
312 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
313 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
314 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
317 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
319 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
321 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
323 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
325 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
326 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
327 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
328 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
329 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
330 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
331 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
332 and which rejects large files.
334 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
335 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
336 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
337 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
339 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
340 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
341 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
343 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
345 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
348 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
350 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
351 for compatibility with paxutils.
353 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
354 if no explicit operands were given.
356 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
357 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
358 even if they begin with `-'.
360 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
361 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
362 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
363 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
364 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
365 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
368 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
370 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
371 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
372 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
375 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
377 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
378 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
380 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
383 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
384 numeric header field.
387 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
389 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
390 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
391 the original file or directory.
394 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
396 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
398 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
399 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
401 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
404 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
406 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
407 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
408 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
410 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
411 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
412 The symbolic format (e.g. "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
413 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
414 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
415 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
417 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
418 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
419 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
420 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
422 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
423 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
424 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
426 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
428 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
431 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
433 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
436 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
438 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
439 this matches historical practice.
442 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
444 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
445 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
446 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
449 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
451 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
454 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
458 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
460 * Support for large files, e.g. files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
461 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
462 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
463 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
464 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
465 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
466 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
467 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
468 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
469 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
470 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
472 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
475 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
476 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
479 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
480 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
481 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
482 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
485 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
486 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
487 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
488 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
489 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
490 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
493 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
494 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
495 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
496 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
497 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
498 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
499 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
500 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
501 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
504 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
505 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
506 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
507 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
508 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
509 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
510 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
511 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
513 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
515 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
517 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
518 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
519 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
520 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
521 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
523 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
525 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
527 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
528 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
529 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
532 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
534 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
536 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
537 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
538 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
539 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
541 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
543 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
545 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
548 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
550 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
552 * Several Makefile cleanups.
554 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
558 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
559 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
560 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
561 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
562 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
566 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
568 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
569 for it will eventually be removed.
571 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
572 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
574 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
575 after they are added to the archive.
577 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
580 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
581 is being read or written.
583 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
584 omitted from the archive.
586 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
587 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
589 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
590 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
592 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
593 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
594 around to the beginning.
596 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
597 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
598 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
600 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
601 their original values after dumping the file.
603 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
606 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
607 modification and access times.
609 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
610 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
611 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
614 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
616 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
617 +newer-mtime work right.
619 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
621 * Sparse files now work correctly.
623 * +volume is now called +label.
625 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
626 what +exclude used to do.
628 * Exit status is now correct.
630 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
632 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
634 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
635 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
636 point instead of waiting for a write error.
638 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
639 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
640 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
641 all our backups at the FSF.
643 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
644 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
645 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
647 * See ChangeLog for more details.
651 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003
652 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
654 This file is part of GNU tar.
656 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
657 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
658 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
661 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
662 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
663 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
664 GNU General Public License for more details.
666 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
667 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
668 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
669 Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
673 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"