1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes.
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
4 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, (CVS version)
10 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
11 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
15 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
16 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
17 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
18 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
19 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
22 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
23 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
24 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
26 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
27 following command line options:
29 --wildcards use wildcards
30 --anchored patterns match file name start
31 --ignore-case ignore case
32 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
34 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
35 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
37 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
38 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
39 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
41 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
42 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
44 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
45 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
46 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
47 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
49 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
51 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
52 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
56 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
57 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
58 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
60 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
62 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
64 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
65 versions it worked only with --extract.
67 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
68 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
69 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
70 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
71 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
72 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
74 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
75 as well as that about directories.
78 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
82 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
83 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
84 including another -T option.
85 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
86 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
87 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
88 dash, use the --add-file option.
90 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
91 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
93 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
94 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
95 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
97 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
98 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
99 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
102 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
103 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
105 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
106 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
107 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
108 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
110 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
113 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
114 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
117 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
118 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
119 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
120 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
121 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
123 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
124 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
126 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
127 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
128 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
129 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
130 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
131 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
132 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
134 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
135 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
136 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
137 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
139 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
140 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
141 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
142 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
144 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
145 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
146 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
150 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
151 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
152 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
153 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
154 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
155 was not processed correctly.
156 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
158 ** Compare mode (tar d) hanged when trying to compare file contents.
159 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
161 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
162 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
163 (for ustar and v7 formats).
164 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
165 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
166 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
167 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
171 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
173 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
174 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
177 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
179 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
180 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
181 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
183 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
184 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
187 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
188 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
189 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
190 back up. This change fixes the bug.
192 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
195 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
198 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
199 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
201 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
202 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
204 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
205 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
206 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
208 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
210 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
211 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
212 introduced in version 1.14
214 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
215 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
216 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
217 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
218 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
221 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
222 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
223 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
224 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
225 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
226 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
227 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
228 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
229 extracted copy in such cases.
230 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
231 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
232 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
233 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
234 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
235 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
236 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
239 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
241 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
242 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
243 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
244 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
245 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
246 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
247 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
249 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
250 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
251 the previous default behavior.
253 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
254 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
255 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
256 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
259 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
260 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
261 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
262 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
263 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
265 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
266 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
267 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
268 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
269 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
270 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
271 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
273 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
274 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
277 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
278 individual files, as well as on directories.
280 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
281 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
282 option is given to configure.
284 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
285 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
286 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
287 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
288 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
289 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
290 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
291 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
292 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
294 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
295 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
298 * Removed obsolete command line options:
299 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
300 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
301 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
302 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
303 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
304 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
305 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
307 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
308 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
309 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
310 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
315 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
320 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
322 * New option --overwrite-dir.
323 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
324 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
327 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
329 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
332 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
337 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
339 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
342 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
344 * Some bugs were fixed:
346 - hard links to symbolic links
348 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
350 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
351 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
352 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
353 exclude patterns are interpreted.
355 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
356 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
357 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
358 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
359 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
360 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
361 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
362 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
364 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
365 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
366 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
369 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
371 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
372 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
374 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
375 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
378 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
380 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
381 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
382 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
384 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
385 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
387 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
389 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
391 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
393 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
395 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
396 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
398 * New language supported: da.
400 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
401 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
403 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
404 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
406 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
409 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
411 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
412 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
415 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
417 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
418 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
419 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
420 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
421 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
422 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
423 longstanding security problems.
425 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
427 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
428 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
429 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
430 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
431 extracting a new directory.
433 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
434 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
435 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
437 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
438 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
440 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
441 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
442 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
443 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
444 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
445 names have multibyte chars.
447 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
448 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
449 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
450 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
451 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
452 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
453 are also escaped as needed.
455 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
456 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
459 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
461 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
462 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
465 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
467 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
468 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
469 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
472 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
474 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
475 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
476 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
477 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
480 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
482 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
484 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
486 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
488 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
489 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
490 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
491 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
492 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
493 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
494 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
495 and which rejects large files.
497 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
498 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
499 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
500 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
502 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
503 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
504 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
506 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
508 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
511 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
513 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
514 for compatibility with paxutils.
516 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
517 if no explicit operands were given.
519 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
520 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
521 even if they begin with `-'.
523 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
524 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
525 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
526 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
527 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
528 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
531 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
533 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
534 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
535 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
538 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
540 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
541 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
543 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
546 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
547 numeric header field.
550 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
552 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
553 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
554 the original file or directory.
557 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
559 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
561 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
562 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
564 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
567 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
569 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
570 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
571 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
573 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
574 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
575 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
576 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
577 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
578 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
580 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
581 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
582 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
583 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
585 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
586 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
587 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
589 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
591 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
594 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
596 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
599 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
601 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
602 this matches historical practice.
605 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
607 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
608 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
609 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
612 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
614 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
617 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
621 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
623 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
624 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
625 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
626 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
627 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
628 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
629 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
630 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
631 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
632 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
633 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
635 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
638 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
639 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
642 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
643 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
644 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
645 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
648 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
649 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
650 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
651 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
652 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
653 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
656 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
657 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
658 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
659 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
660 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
661 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
662 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
663 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
664 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
667 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
668 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
669 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
670 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
671 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
672 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
673 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
674 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
676 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
678 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
680 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
681 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
682 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
683 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
684 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
686 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
688 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
690 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
691 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
692 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
695 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
697 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
699 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
700 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
701 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
702 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
704 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
706 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
708 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
711 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
713 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
715 * Several Makefile cleanups.
717 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
721 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
722 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
723 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
724 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
725 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
729 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
731 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
732 for it will eventually be removed.
734 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
735 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
737 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
738 after they are added to the archive.
740 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
743 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
744 is being read or written.
746 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
747 omitted from the archive.
749 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
750 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
752 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
753 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
755 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
756 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
757 around to the beginning.
759 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
760 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
761 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
763 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
764 their original values after dumping the file.
766 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
769 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
770 modification and access times.
772 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
773 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
774 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
777 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
779 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
780 +newer-mtime work right.
782 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
784 * Sparse files now work correctly.
786 * +volume is now called +label.
788 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
789 what +exclude used to do.
791 * Exit status is now correct.
793 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
795 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
797 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
798 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
799 point instead of waiting for a write error.
801 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
802 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
803 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
804 all our backups at the FSF.
806 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
807 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
808 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
810 * See ChangeLog for more details.
814 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
815 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
817 This file is part of GNU tar.
819 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
820 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
821 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
824 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
825 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
826 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
827 GNU General Public License for more details.
829 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
830 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
831 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
832 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
836 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"