1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-03-17
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
10 Tar --remove-files failed to remove a directory which contained
11 symlinks to another files within that directory.
13 ** --test-label behavior
15 In case of a mismatch, `tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
16 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
18 The `--verbose' option used with `--test-label' provides additional
21 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
23 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
25 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
26 matches the actual volume label.
28 ** --label used with --update
30 The `--label' option can be used with `--update' to prevent accidental
33 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
35 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
38 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
40 * Record size autodetection
42 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
43 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
44 to regular files and pipes).
48 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
49 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
51 * New command line option `--warning'
53 The `--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
54 particular warning messages during `tar' run. It takes a single
55 argument (a `keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
56 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with `no-', such warning
57 messages are suppressed. For example,
59 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
61 suppresses the output of `A lone zero block' diagnostics, which is
62 normally issued if `archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
64 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
67 * New command line option `--level'
69 The `--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
70 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
71 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
72 `--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
73 the snapshot file if it exists.
75 * Files removed during incremental dumps
77 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
78 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
79 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
80 during file system scan.
82 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
83 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
86 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
87 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
88 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
89 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
90 is issued and exit code remains 0.
92 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
94 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
95 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
96 can be overridden by the
98 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
100 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
101 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
103 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
104 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
106 This can be overridden by the
108 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
110 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
111 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
113 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
115 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
116 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
117 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
118 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
119 an existing file, starting with `/' or `.'. In the latter
120 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
122 * Environment of --to-command script.
124 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
125 the following variables:
127 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
128 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
129 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
130 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
131 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
134 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
135 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
136 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
137 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
138 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
139 succesfully stored in the archive.
140 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
141 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
143 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
146 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
148 * Support for xz compression
150 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
152 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
153 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
154 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
155 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
157 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
159 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
160 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
161 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
163 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
167 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
168 --use-compress-program.
170 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
173 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
175 * New short option -J
177 A shortcut for --lzma.
181 * New option --no-auto-compress
183 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
185 * New option --no-null
187 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
189 * Compressed format recognition
191 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
192 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
196 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
199 * Transformation scope flags
201 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
202 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
205 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
208 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
211 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
213 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
214 `H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
216 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
219 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
221 Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
222 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
223 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
224 can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
226 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
230 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
232 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If detected record size differs from
233 the expected value (either default, or set on the command line), tar
234 always prints a warning if verbosity level is set to 1 or greater,
235 i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
239 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
241 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
243 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
244 of the archive file name.
248 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
250 * New option --hard-dereference
252 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
253 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
255 * New option --checkpoint-action
257 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
258 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
259 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
260 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
261 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
262 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
264 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
266 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
267 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
268 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
271 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
272 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
273 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
274 environment variable.
276 * The --transform option.
278 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
279 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
281 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
282 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
284 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
285 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
288 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
291 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
293 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
294 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
296 * Incremental archives
298 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
301 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
305 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
307 * New option --exclude-vcs
309 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
310 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
312 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
314 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
322 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
324 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
325 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
326 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
329 * Fix --version output.
331 * Recognition of broken archives.
333 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
334 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
335 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
336 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
338 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
340 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
343 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
345 * Licensed under the GPLv3
347 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
350 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
352 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
353 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
355 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
356 a full dump when both options were given.
358 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
359 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
361 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
363 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
364 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
365 option affects hard link targets as well.
367 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
368 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
371 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
373 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
374 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
377 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
378 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
379 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
380 still added to the archive.
382 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
383 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
384 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
385 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
386 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
387 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
388 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
390 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
391 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
392 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
395 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
397 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
398 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
399 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
401 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
402 members during creation.
405 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
406 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
407 the listing to stderr.
410 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
412 * Incompatible changes
416 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
417 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
421 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
422 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
423 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
424 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
425 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
428 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
429 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
430 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
432 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
433 following command line options:
435 --wildcards use wildcards
436 --anchored patterns match file name start
437 --ignore-case ignore case
438 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
440 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
441 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
443 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
444 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
445 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
447 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
448 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
450 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
451 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
452 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
453 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
455 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
457 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
458 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
462 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
463 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
464 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
466 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
468 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
470 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
471 versions it worked only with --extract.
473 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
474 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
475 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
476 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
477 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
478 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
480 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
481 as well as that about directories.
483 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
484 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
485 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
488 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
489 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
490 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
491 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
492 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
495 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
498 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
502 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
503 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
504 including another -T option.
505 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
506 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
507 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
508 dash, use the --add-file option.
510 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
511 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
513 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
514 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
515 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
517 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
518 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
519 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
522 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
523 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
525 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
526 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
527 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
528 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
530 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
533 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
534 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
537 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
538 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
539 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
540 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
541 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
543 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
544 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
546 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
547 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
548 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
549 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
550 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
551 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
552 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
554 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
555 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
556 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
557 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
559 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
560 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
561 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
562 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
564 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
565 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
566 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
570 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
571 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
572 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
573 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
574 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
575 was not processed correctly.
576 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
578 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
579 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
581 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
582 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
583 (for ustar and v7 formats).
584 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
585 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
586 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
587 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
591 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
593 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
594 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
597 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
599 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
600 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
601 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
603 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
604 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
607 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
608 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
609 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
610 back up. This change fixes the bug.
612 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
615 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
618 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
619 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
621 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
622 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
624 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
625 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
626 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
628 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
630 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
631 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
632 introduced in version 1.14
634 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
635 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
636 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
637 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
638 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
641 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
642 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
643 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
644 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
645 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
646 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
647 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
648 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
649 extracted copy in such cases.
650 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
651 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
652 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
653 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
654 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
655 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
656 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
659 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
661 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
662 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
663 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
664 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
665 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
666 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
667 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
669 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
670 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
671 the previous default behavior.
673 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
674 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
675 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
676 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
679 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
680 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
681 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
682 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
683 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
685 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
686 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
687 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
688 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
689 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
690 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
691 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
693 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
694 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
697 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
698 individual files, as well as on directories.
700 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
701 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
702 option is given to configure.
704 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
705 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
706 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
707 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
708 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
709 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
710 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
711 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
712 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
714 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
715 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
718 * Removed obsolete command line options:
719 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
720 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
721 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
722 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
723 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
724 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
725 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
727 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
728 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
729 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
730 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
735 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
740 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
742 * New option --overwrite-dir.
743 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
744 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
747 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
749 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
752 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
757 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
759 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
762 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
764 * Some bugs were fixed:
766 - hard links to symbolic links
768 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
770 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
771 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
772 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
773 exclude patterns are interpreted.
775 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
776 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
777 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
778 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
779 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
780 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
781 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
782 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
784 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
785 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
786 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
789 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
791 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
792 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
794 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
795 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
798 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
800 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
801 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
802 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
804 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
805 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
807 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
809 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
811 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
813 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
815 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
816 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
818 * New language supported: da.
820 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
821 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
823 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
824 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
826 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
829 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
831 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
832 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
835 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
837 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
838 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
839 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
840 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
841 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
842 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
843 longstanding security problems.
845 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
847 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
848 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
849 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
850 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
851 extracting a new directory.
853 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
854 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
855 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
857 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
858 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
860 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
861 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
862 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
863 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
864 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
865 names have multibyte chars.
867 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
868 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
869 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
870 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
871 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
872 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
873 are also escaped as needed.
875 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
876 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
879 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
881 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
882 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
885 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
887 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
888 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
889 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
892 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
894 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
895 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
896 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
897 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
900 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
902 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
904 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
906 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
908 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
909 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
910 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
911 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
912 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
913 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
914 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
915 and which rejects large files.
917 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
918 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
919 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
920 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
922 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
923 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
924 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
926 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
928 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
931 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
933 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
934 for compatibility with paxutils.
936 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
937 if no explicit operands were given.
939 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
940 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
941 even if they begin with `-'.
943 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
944 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
945 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
946 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
947 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
948 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
951 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
953 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
954 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
955 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
958 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
960 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
961 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
963 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
966 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
967 numeric header field.
970 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
972 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
973 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
974 the original file or directory.
977 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
979 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
981 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
982 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
984 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
987 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
989 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
990 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
991 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
993 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
994 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
995 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
996 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
997 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
998 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1000 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1001 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1002 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1003 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1005 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1006 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1007 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1009 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1011 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1014 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1016 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1019 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1021 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1022 this matches historical practice.
1025 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1027 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1028 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1029 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1032 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1034 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1037 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1041 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1043 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1044 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1045 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1046 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1047 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1048 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1049 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1050 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1051 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1052 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1053 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1055 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1058 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1059 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1062 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1063 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1064 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1065 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1068 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1069 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1070 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1071 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1072 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
1073 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1076 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1077 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1078 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1079 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1080 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1081 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1082 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1083 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1084 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1087 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1088 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1089 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1090 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1091 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1092 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1093 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1094 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1096 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1098 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1100 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1101 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1102 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1103 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1104 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1106 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1108 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1110 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1111 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1112 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1115 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1117 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1119 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1120 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1121 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1122 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1124 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1126 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1128 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1131 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1133 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1135 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1137 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1141 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1142 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1143 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1144 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1145 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1149 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1151 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
1152 for it will eventually be removed.
1154 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1155 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1157 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1158 after they are added to the archive.
1160 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1163 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1164 is being read or written.
1166 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1167 omitted from the archive.
1169 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1170 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1172 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1173 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1175 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1176 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1177 around to the beginning.
1179 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1180 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1181 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
1183 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1184 their original values after dumping the file.
1186 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1189 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1190 modification and access times.
1192 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1193 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1194 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1197 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1199 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1200 +newer-mtime work right.
1202 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1204 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1206 * +volume is now called +label.
1208 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1209 what +exclude used to do.
1211 * Exit status is now correct.
1213 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1215 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1217 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1218 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1219 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1221 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1222 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1223 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1224 all our backups at the FSF.
1226 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1227 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1228 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1230 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1234 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1235 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1237 This file is part of GNU tar.
1239 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1240 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1241 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1244 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1245 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1246 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1247 GNU General Public License for more details.
1249 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1250 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1251 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1252 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1256 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1257 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1258 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1259 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1260 time-stamp-end: "\n"