1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes.
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
6 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
7 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
9 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
10 a full dump when both options were given.
15 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
16 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
19 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
20 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
21 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
22 still added to the archive.
24 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
25 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
26 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
27 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
28 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
29 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
30 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
32 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
33 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
34 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
37 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
39 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
40 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
41 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
43 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
44 members during creation.
47 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
48 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
49 the listing to stderr.
52 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
54 * Incompatible changes
58 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
59 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
63 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
64 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
65 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
66 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
67 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
70 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
71 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
72 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
74 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
75 following command line options:
77 --wildcards use wildcards
78 --anchored patterns match file name start
79 --ignore-case ignore case
80 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
82 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
83 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
85 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
86 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
87 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
89 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
90 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
92 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
93 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
94 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
95 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
97 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
99 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
100 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
104 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
105 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
106 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
108 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
110 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
112 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
113 versions it worked only with --extract.
115 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
116 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
117 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
118 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
119 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
120 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
122 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
123 as well as that about directories.
125 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
126 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
127 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
130 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
131 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
132 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
133 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
134 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
137 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
140 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
144 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
145 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
146 including another -T option.
147 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
148 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
149 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
150 dash, use the --add-file option.
152 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
153 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
155 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
156 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
157 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
159 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
160 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
161 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
164 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
165 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
167 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
168 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
169 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
170 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
172 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
175 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
176 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
179 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
180 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
181 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
182 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
183 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
185 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
186 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
188 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
189 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
190 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
191 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
192 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
193 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
194 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
196 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
197 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
198 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
199 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
201 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
202 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
203 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
204 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
206 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
207 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
208 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
212 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
213 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
214 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
215 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
216 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
217 was not processed correctly.
218 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
220 ** Compare mode (tar d) hanged when trying to compare file contents.
221 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
223 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
224 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
225 (for ustar and v7 formats).
226 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
227 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
228 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
229 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
233 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
235 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
236 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
239 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
241 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
242 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
243 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
245 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
246 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
249 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
250 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
251 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
252 back up. This change fixes the bug.
254 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
257 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
260 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
261 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
263 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
264 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
266 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
267 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
268 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
270 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
272 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
273 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
274 introduced in version 1.14
276 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
277 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
278 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
279 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
280 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
283 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
284 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
285 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
286 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
287 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
288 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
289 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
290 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
291 extracted copy in such cases.
292 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
293 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
294 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
295 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
296 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
297 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
298 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
301 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
303 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
304 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
305 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
306 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
307 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
308 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
309 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
311 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
312 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
313 the previous default behavior.
315 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
316 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
317 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
318 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
321 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
322 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
323 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
324 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
325 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
327 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
328 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
329 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
330 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
331 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
332 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
333 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
335 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
336 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
339 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
340 individual files, as well as on directories.
342 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
343 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
344 option is given to configure.
346 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
347 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
348 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
349 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
350 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
351 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
352 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
353 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
354 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
356 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
357 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
360 * Removed obsolete command line options:
361 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
362 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
363 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
364 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
365 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
366 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
367 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
369 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
370 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
371 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
372 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
377 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
382 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
384 * New option --overwrite-dir.
385 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
386 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
389 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
391 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
394 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
399 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
401 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
404 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
406 * Some bugs were fixed:
408 - hard links to symbolic links
410 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
412 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
413 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
414 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
415 exclude patterns are interpreted.
417 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
418 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
419 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
420 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
421 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
422 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
423 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
424 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
426 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
427 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
428 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
431 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
433 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
434 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
436 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
437 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
440 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
442 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
443 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
444 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
446 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
447 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
449 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
451 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
453 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
455 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
457 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
458 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
460 * New language supported: da.
462 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
463 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
465 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
466 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
468 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
471 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
473 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
474 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
477 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
479 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
480 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
481 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
482 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
483 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
484 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
485 longstanding security problems.
487 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
489 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
490 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
491 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
492 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
493 extracting a new directory.
495 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
496 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
497 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
499 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
500 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
502 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
503 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
504 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
505 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
506 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
507 names have multibyte chars.
509 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
510 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
511 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
512 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
513 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
514 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
515 are also escaped as needed.
517 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
518 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
521 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
523 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
524 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
527 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
529 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
530 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
531 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
534 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
536 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
537 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
538 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
539 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
542 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
544 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
546 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
548 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
550 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
551 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
552 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
553 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
554 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
555 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
556 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
557 and which rejects large files.
559 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
560 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
561 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
562 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
564 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
565 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
566 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
568 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
570 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
573 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
575 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
576 for compatibility with paxutils.
578 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
579 if no explicit operands were given.
581 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
582 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
583 even if they begin with `-'.
585 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
586 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
587 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
588 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
589 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
590 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
593 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
595 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
596 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
597 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
600 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
602 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
603 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
605 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
608 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
609 numeric header field.
612 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
614 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
615 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
616 the original file or directory.
619 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
621 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
623 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
624 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
626 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
629 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
631 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
632 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
633 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
635 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
636 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
637 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
638 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
639 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
640 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
642 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
643 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
644 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
645 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
647 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
648 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
649 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
651 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
653 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
656 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
658 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
661 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
663 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
664 this matches historical practice.
667 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
669 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
670 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
671 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
674 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
676 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
679 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
683 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
685 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
686 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
687 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
688 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
689 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
690 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
691 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
692 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
693 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
694 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
695 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
697 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
700 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
701 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
704 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
705 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
706 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
707 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
710 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
711 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
712 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
713 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
714 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
715 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
718 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
719 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
720 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
721 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
722 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
723 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
724 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
725 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
726 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
729 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
730 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
731 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
732 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
733 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
734 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
735 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
736 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
738 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
740 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
742 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
743 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
744 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
745 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
746 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
748 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
750 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
752 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
753 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
754 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
757 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
759 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
761 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
762 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
763 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
764 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
766 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
768 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
770 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
773 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
775 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
777 * Several Makefile cleanups.
779 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
783 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
784 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
785 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
786 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
787 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
791 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
793 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
794 for it will eventually be removed.
796 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
797 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
799 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
800 after they are added to the archive.
802 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
805 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
806 is being read or written.
808 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
809 omitted from the archive.
811 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
812 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
814 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
815 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
817 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
818 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
819 around to the beginning.
821 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
822 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
823 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
825 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
826 their original values after dumping the file.
828 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
831 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
832 modification and access times.
834 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
835 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
836 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
839 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
841 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
842 +newer-mtime work right.
844 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
846 * Sparse files now work correctly.
848 * +volume is now called +label.
850 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
851 what +exclude used to do.
853 * Exit status is now correct.
855 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
857 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
859 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
860 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
861 point instead of waiting for a write error.
863 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
864 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
865 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
866 all our backups at the FSF.
868 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
869 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
870 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
872 * See ChangeLog for more details.
876 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
877 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
879 This file is part of GNU tar.
881 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
882 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
883 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
886 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
887 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
888 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
889 GNU General Public License for more details.
891 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
892 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
893 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
894 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
898 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"