1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes.
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
4 version 1.15.2 (CVS version -- unreleased)
8 * Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
9 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
10 including another -T option.
11 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
12 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
13 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
14 dash, use the --add-file option.
16 * List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
17 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
19 * New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
20 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
21 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
23 * New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
24 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
25 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
28 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
29 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
31 * New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
32 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
33 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
34 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
36 * New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
39 * New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
40 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
43 * New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
44 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
45 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
46 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
47 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
49 * New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
50 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
52 * New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
53 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
54 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
55 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
56 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
57 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
58 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
60 * The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
61 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
62 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
63 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
65 * Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
66 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
67 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
68 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
70 * The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
71 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
72 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
76 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
77 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
78 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
79 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
80 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
81 was not processed correctly.
82 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
84 ** Compare mode (tar d) hanged when trying to compare file contents.
85 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
87 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
88 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
89 (for ustar and v7 formats).
92 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
94 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
95 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
98 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
100 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
101 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
102 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
104 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
105 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
108 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
109 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
110 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
111 back up. This change fixes the bug.
113 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
116 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
119 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
120 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
122 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
123 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
125 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
126 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
127 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
129 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
131 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
132 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
133 introduced in version 1.14
135 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
136 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
137 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
138 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
139 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
142 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
143 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
144 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
145 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
146 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
147 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
148 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
149 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
150 extracted copy in such cases.
151 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
152 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
153 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
154 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
155 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
156 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
157 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
160 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
162 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
163 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
164 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
165 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
166 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
167 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
168 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
170 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
171 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
172 the previous default behavior.
174 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
175 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
176 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
177 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
180 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
181 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
182 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
183 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
184 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
186 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
187 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
188 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
189 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
190 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
191 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
192 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
194 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
195 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
198 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
199 individual files, as well as on directories.
201 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
202 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
203 option is given to configure.
205 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
206 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
207 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
208 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
209 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
210 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
211 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
212 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
213 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
215 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
216 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
219 * Removed obsolete command line options:
220 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
221 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
222 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
223 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
224 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
225 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
226 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
228 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
229 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
230 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
231 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
236 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
241 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
243 * New option --overwrite-dir.
244 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
245 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
248 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
250 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
253 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
258 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
260 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
263 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
265 * Some bugs were fixed:
267 - hard links to symbolic links
269 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
271 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
272 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
273 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
274 exclude patterns are interpreted.
276 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
277 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
278 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
279 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
280 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
281 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
282 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
283 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
285 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
286 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
287 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
290 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
292 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
293 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
295 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
296 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
299 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
301 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
302 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
303 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
305 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
306 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
308 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
310 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
312 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
314 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
316 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
317 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
319 * New language supported: da.
321 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
322 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
324 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
325 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
327 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
330 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
332 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
333 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
336 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
338 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
339 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
340 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
341 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
342 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
343 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
344 longstanding security problems.
346 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
348 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
349 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
350 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
351 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
352 extracting a new directory.
354 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
355 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
356 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
358 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
359 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
361 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
362 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
363 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
364 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
365 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
366 names have multibyte chars.
368 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
369 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
370 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
371 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
372 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
373 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
374 are also escaped as needed.
376 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
377 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
380 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
382 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
383 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
386 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
388 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
389 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
390 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
393 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
395 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
396 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
397 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
398 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
401 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
403 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
405 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
407 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
409 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
410 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
411 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
412 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
413 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
414 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
415 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
416 and which rejects large files.
418 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
419 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
420 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
421 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
423 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
424 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
425 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
427 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
429 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
432 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
434 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
435 for compatibility with paxutils.
437 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
438 if no explicit operands were given.
440 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
441 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
442 even if they begin with `-'.
444 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
445 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
446 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
447 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
448 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
449 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
452 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
454 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
455 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
456 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
459 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
461 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
462 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
464 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
467 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
468 numeric header field.
471 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
473 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
474 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
475 the original file or directory.
478 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
480 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
482 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
483 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
485 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
488 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
490 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
491 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
492 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
494 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
495 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
496 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
497 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
498 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
499 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
501 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
502 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
503 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
504 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
506 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
507 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
508 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
510 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
512 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
515 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
517 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
520 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
522 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
523 this matches historical practice.
526 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
528 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
529 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
530 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
533 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
535 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
538 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
542 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
544 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
545 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
546 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
547 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
548 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
549 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
550 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
551 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
552 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
553 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
554 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
556 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
559 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
560 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
563 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
564 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
565 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
566 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
569 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
570 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
571 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
572 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
573 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
574 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
577 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
578 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
579 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
580 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
581 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
582 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
583 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
584 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
585 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
588 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
589 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
590 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
591 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
592 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
593 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
594 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
595 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
597 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
599 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
601 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
602 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
603 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
604 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
605 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
607 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
609 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
611 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
612 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
613 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
616 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
618 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
620 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
621 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
622 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
623 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
625 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
627 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
629 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
632 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
634 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
636 * Several Makefile cleanups.
638 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
642 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
643 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
644 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
645 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
646 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
650 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
652 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
653 for it will eventually be removed.
655 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
656 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
658 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
659 after they are added to the archive.
661 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
664 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
665 is being read or written.
667 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
668 omitted from the archive.
670 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
671 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
673 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
674 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
676 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
677 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
678 around to the beginning.
680 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
681 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
682 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
684 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
685 their original values after dumping the file.
687 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
690 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
691 modification and access times.
693 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
694 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
695 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
698 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
700 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
701 +newer-mtime work right.
703 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
705 * Sparse files now work correctly.
707 * +volume is now called +label.
709 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
710 what +exclude used to do.
712 * Exit status is now correct.
714 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
716 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
718 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
719 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
720 point instead of waiting for a write error.
722 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
723 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
724 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
725 all our backups at the FSF.
727 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
728 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
729 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
731 * See ChangeLog for more details.
735 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
736 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
738 This file is part of GNU tar.
740 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
741 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
742 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
745 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
746 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
747 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
748 GNU General Public License for more details.
750 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
751 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
752 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
753 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
757 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"