1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-09-06
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
5 version 1.23.90 - (Git)
7 * The --full-time option.
9 New command line option `--full-time' instructs tar to output file
10 time stamps to the full resolution.
14 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
16 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
17 modified while tar is creating an archive. The new checks are
18 implemented via the openat, fstatat, and readlinkat calls standardized
19 by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system that lacks these calls, tar
20 emulates them at some cost in efficiency and reliability.
22 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
24 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
25 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
26 invoked as in the example below:
28 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
32 Tar --remove-files failed to remove a directory which contained
33 symlinks to another files within that directory.
35 ** --test-label behavior
37 In case of a mismatch, `tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
38 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
40 The `--verbose' option used with `--test-label' provides additional
43 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
45 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
47 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
48 matches the actual volume label.
50 ** --label used with --update
52 The `--label' option can be used with `--update' to prevent accidental
55 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
57 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
59 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
61 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
62 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
64 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
67 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
69 * Record size autodetection
71 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
72 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
73 to regular files and pipes).
77 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
78 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
80 * New command line option `--warning'
82 The `--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
83 particular warning messages during `tar' run. It takes a single
84 argument (a `keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
85 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with `no-', such warning
86 messages are suppressed. For example,
88 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
90 suppresses the output of `A lone zero block' diagnostics, which is
91 normally issued if `archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
93 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
96 * New command line option `--level'
98 The `--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
99 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
100 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
101 `--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
102 the snapshot file if it exists.
104 * Files removed during incremental dumps
106 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
107 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
108 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
109 during file system scan.
111 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
112 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
115 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
116 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
117 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
118 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
119 is issued and exit code remains 0.
121 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
123 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
124 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
125 can be overridden by the
127 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
129 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
130 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
132 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
133 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
135 This can be overridden by the
137 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
139 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
140 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
142 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
144 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
145 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
146 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
147 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
148 an existing file, starting with `/' or `.'. In the latter
149 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
151 * Environment of --to-command script.
153 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
154 the following variables:
156 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
157 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
158 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
159 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
160 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
163 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
164 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
165 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
166 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
167 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
168 succesfully stored in the archive.
169 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
170 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
172 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
175 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
177 * Support for xz compression
179 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
181 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
182 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
183 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
184 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
186 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
188 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
189 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
190 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
192 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
196 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
197 --use-compress-program.
199 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
202 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
204 * New short option -J
206 A shortcut for --lzma.
210 * New option --no-auto-compress
212 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
214 * New option --no-null
216 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
218 * Compressed format recognition
220 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
221 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
225 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
228 * Transformation scope flags
230 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
231 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
234 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
237 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
240 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
242 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
243 `H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
245 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
248 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
250 Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
251 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
252 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
253 can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
255 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
259 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
261 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
262 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
263 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
264 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
268 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
270 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
272 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
273 of the archive file name.
277 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
279 * New option --hard-dereference
281 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
282 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
284 * New option --checkpoint-action
286 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
287 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
288 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
289 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
290 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
291 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
293 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
295 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
296 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
297 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
300 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
301 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
302 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
303 environment variable.
305 * The --transform option.
307 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
308 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
310 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
311 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
313 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
314 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
317 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
320 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
322 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
323 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
325 * Incremental archives
327 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
330 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
334 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
336 * New option --exclude-vcs
338 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
339 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
341 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
343 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
351 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
353 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
354 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
355 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
358 * Fix --version output.
360 * Recognition of broken archives.
362 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
363 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
364 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
365 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
367 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
369 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
372 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
374 * Licensed under the GPLv3
376 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
379 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
381 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
382 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
384 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
385 a full dump when both options were given.
387 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
388 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
390 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
392 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
393 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
394 option affects hard link targets as well.
396 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
397 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
400 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
402 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
403 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
406 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
407 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
408 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
409 still added to the archive.
411 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
412 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
413 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
414 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
415 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
416 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
417 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
419 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
420 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
421 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
424 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
426 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
427 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
428 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
430 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
431 members during creation.
434 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
435 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
436 the listing to stderr.
439 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
441 * Incompatible changes
445 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
446 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
450 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
451 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
452 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
453 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
454 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
457 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
458 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
459 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
461 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
462 following command line options:
464 --wildcards use wildcards
465 --anchored patterns match file name start
466 --ignore-case ignore case
467 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
469 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
470 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
472 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
473 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
474 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
476 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
477 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
479 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
480 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
481 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
482 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
484 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
486 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
487 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
491 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
492 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
493 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
495 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
497 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
499 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
500 versions it worked only with --extract.
502 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
503 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
504 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
505 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
506 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
507 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
509 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
510 as well as that about directories.
512 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
513 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
514 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
517 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
518 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
519 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
520 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
521 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
524 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
527 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
531 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
532 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
533 including another -T option.
534 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
535 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
536 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
537 dash, use the --add-file option.
539 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
540 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
542 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
543 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
544 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
546 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
547 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
548 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
551 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
552 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
554 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
555 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
556 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
557 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
559 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
562 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
563 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
566 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
567 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
568 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
569 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
570 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
572 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
573 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
575 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
576 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
577 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
578 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
579 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
580 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
581 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
583 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
584 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
585 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
586 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
588 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
589 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
590 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
591 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
593 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
594 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
595 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
599 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
600 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
601 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
602 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
603 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
604 was not processed correctly.
605 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
607 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
608 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
610 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
611 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
612 (for ustar and v7 formats).
613 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
614 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
615 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
616 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
620 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
622 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
623 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
626 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
628 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
629 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
630 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
632 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
633 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
636 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
637 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
638 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
639 back up. This change fixes the bug.
641 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
644 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
647 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
648 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
650 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
651 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
653 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
654 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
655 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
657 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
659 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
660 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
661 introduced in version 1.14
663 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
664 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
665 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
666 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
667 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
670 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
671 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
672 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
673 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
674 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
675 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
676 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
677 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
678 extracted copy in such cases.
679 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
680 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
681 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
682 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
683 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
684 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
685 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
688 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
690 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
691 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
692 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
693 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
694 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
695 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
696 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
698 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
699 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
700 the previous default behavior.
702 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
703 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
704 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
705 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
708 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
709 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
710 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
711 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
712 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
714 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
715 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
716 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
717 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
718 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
719 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
720 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
722 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
723 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
726 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
727 individual files, as well as on directories.
729 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
730 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
731 option is given to configure.
733 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
734 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
735 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
736 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
737 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
738 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
739 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
740 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
741 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
743 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
744 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
747 * Removed obsolete command line options:
748 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
749 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
750 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
751 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
752 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
753 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
754 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
756 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
757 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
758 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
759 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
764 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
769 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
771 * New option --overwrite-dir.
772 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
773 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
776 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
778 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
781 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
786 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
788 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
791 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
793 * Some bugs were fixed:
795 - hard links to symbolic links
797 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
799 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
800 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
801 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
802 exclude patterns are interpreted.
804 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
805 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
806 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
807 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
808 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
809 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
810 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
811 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
813 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
814 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
815 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
818 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
820 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
821 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
823 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
824 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
827 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
829 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
830 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
831 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
833 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
834 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
836 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
838 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
840 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
842 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
844 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
845 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
847 * New language supported: da.
849 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
850 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
852 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
853 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
855 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
858 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
860 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
861 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
864 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
866 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
867 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
868 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
869 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
870 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
871 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
872 longstanding security problems.
874 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
876 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
877 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
878 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
879 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
880 extracting a new directory.
882 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
883 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
884 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
886 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
887 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
889 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
890 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
891 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
892 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
893 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
894 names have multibyte chars.
896 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
897 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
898 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
899 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
900 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
901 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
902 are also escaped as needed.
904 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
905 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
908 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
910 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
911 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
914 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
916 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
917 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
918 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
921 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
923 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
924 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
925 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
926 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
929 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
931 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
933 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
935 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
937 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
938 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
939 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
940 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
941 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
942 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
943 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
944 and which rejects large files.
946 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
947 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
948 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
949 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
951 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
952 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
953 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
955 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
957 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
960 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
962 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
963 for compatibility with paxutils.
965 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
966 if no explicit operands were given.
968 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
969 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
970 even if they begin with `-'.
972 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
973 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
974 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
975 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
976 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
977 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
980 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
982 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
983 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
984 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
987 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
989 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
990 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
992 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
995 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
996 numeric header field.
999 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1001 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
1002 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1003 the original file or directory.
1006 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1008 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1010 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
1011 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1013 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1016 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1018 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1019 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1020 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1022 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1023 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1024 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1025 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1026 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1027 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1029 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1030 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1031 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1032 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1034 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1035 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1036 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1038 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1040 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1043 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1045 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1048 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1050 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1051 this matches historical practice.
1054 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1056 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1057 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1058 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1061 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1063 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1066 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1070 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1072 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1073 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1074 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1075 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1076 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1077 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1078 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1079 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1080 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1081 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1082 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1084 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1087 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1088 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1091 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1092 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1093 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1094 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1097 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1098 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1099 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1100 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1101 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
1102 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1105 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1106 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1107 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1108 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1109 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1110 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1111 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1112 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1113 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1116 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1117 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1118 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1119 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1120 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1121 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1122 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1123 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1125 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1127 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1129 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1130 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1131 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1132 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1133 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1135 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1137 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1139 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1140 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1141 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1144 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1146 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1148 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1149 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1150 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1151 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1153 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1155 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1157 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1160 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1162 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1164 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1166 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1170 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1171 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1172 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1173 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1174 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1178 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1180 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
1181 for it will eventually be removed.
1183 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1184 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1186 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1187 after they are added to the archive.
1189 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1192 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1193 is being read or written.
1195 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1196 omitted from the archive.
1198 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1199 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1201 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1202 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1204 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1205 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1206 around to the beginning.
1208 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1209 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1210 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
1212 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1213 their original values after dumping the file.
1215 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1218 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1219 modification and access times.
1221 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1222 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1223 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1226 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1228 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1229 +newer-mtime work right.
1231 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1233 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1235 * +volume is now called +label.
1237 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1238 what +exclude used to do.
1240 * Exit status is now correct.
1242 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1244 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1246 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1247 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1248 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1250 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1251 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1252 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1253 all our backups at the FSF.
1255 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1256 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1257 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1259 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1263 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1264 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1266 This file is part of GNU tar.
1268 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1269 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1270 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1273 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1274 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1275 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1276 GNU General Public License for more details.
1278 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1279 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1280 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1281 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1285 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1286 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1287 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1288 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1289 time-stamp-end: "\n"