1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2008-02-07
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
7 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
9 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
10 of the archive file name.
14 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
16 * New option --hard-dereference
18 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
19 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
21 * New option --checkpoint-action
23 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
24 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
25 echo=string, and sleep=value. Any number of `--checkpoint-action'
26 options can be specified, the actions will be executed in order of
27 their appearance in the command line.
29 * The --transform option.
31 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
32 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
34 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
35 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
37 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
38 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
41 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
43 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
44 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
47 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
51 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
53 * New option --exclude-vcs
55 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
56 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
58 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
60 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
68 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
70 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
71 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
72 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
75 * Fix --version output.
77 * Recognition of broken archives.
79 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
80 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
81 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
82 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
84 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
86 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
89 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
91 * Licensed under the GPLv3
93 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
96 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
98 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
99 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
101 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
102 a full dump when both options were given.
104 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
105 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
107 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
109 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
110 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
111 option affects hard link targets as well.
113 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
114 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
117 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
119 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
120 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
123 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
124 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
125 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
126 still added to the archive.
128 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
129 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
130 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
131 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
132 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
133 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
134 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
136 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
137 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
138 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
141 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
143 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
144 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
145 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
147 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
148 members during creation.
151 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
152 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
153 the listing to stderr.
156 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
158 * Incompatible changes
162 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
163 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
167 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
168 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
169 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
170 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
171 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
174 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
175 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
176 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
178 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
179 following command line options:
181 --wildcards use wildcards
182 --anchored patterns match file name start
183 --ignore-case ignore case
184 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
186 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
187 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
189 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
190 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
191 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
193 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
194 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
196 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
197 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
198 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
199 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
201 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
203 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
204 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
208 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
209 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
210 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
212 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
214 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
216 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
217 versions it worked only with --extract.
219 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
220 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
221 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
222 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
223 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
224 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
226 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
227 as well as that about directories.
229 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
230 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
231 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
234 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
235 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
236 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
237 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
238 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
241 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
244 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
248 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
249 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
250 including another -T option.
251 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
252 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
253 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
254 dash, use the --add-file option.
256 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
257 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
259 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
260 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
261 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
263 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
264 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
265 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
268 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
269 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
271 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
272 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
273 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
274 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
276 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
279 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
280 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
283 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
284 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
285 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
286 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
287 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
289 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
290 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
292 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
293 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
294 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
295 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
296 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
297 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
298 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
300 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
301 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
302 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
303 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
305 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
306 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
307 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
308 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
310 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
311 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
312 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
316 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
317 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
318 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
319 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
320 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
321 was not processed correctly.
322 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
324 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
325 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
327 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
328 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
329 (for ustar and v7 formats).
330 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
331 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
332 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
333 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
337 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
339 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
340 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
343 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
345 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
346 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
347 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
349 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
350 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
353 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
354 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
355 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
356 back up. This change fixes the bug.
358 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
361 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
364 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
365 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
367 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
368 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
370 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
371 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
372 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
374 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
376 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
377 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
378 introduced in version 1.14
380 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
381 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
382 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
383 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
384 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
387 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
388 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
389 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
390 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
391 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
392 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
393 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
394 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
395 extracted copy in such cases.
396 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
397 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
398 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
399 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
400 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
401 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
402 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
405 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
407 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
408 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
409 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
410 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
411 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
412 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
413 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
415 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
416 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
417 the previous default behavior.
419 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
420 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
421 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
422 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
425 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
426 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
427 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
428 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
429 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
431 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
432 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
433 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
434 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
435 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
436 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
437 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
439 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
440 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
443 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
444 individual files, as well as on directories.
446 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
447 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
448 option is given to configure.
450 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
451 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
452 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
453 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
454 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
455 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
456 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
457 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
458 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
460 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
461 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
464 * Removed obsolete command line options:
465 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
466 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
467 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
468 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
469 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
470 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
471 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
473 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
474 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
475 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
476 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
481 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
486 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
488 * New option --overwrite-dir.
489 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
490 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
493 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
495 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
498 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
503 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
505 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
508 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
510 * Some bugs were fixed:
512 - hard links to symbolic links
514 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
516 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
517 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
518 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
519 exclude patterns are interpreted.
521 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
522 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
523 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
524 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
525 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
526 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
527 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
528 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
530 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
531 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
532 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
535 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
537 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
538 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
540 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
541 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
544 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
546 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
547 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
548 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
550 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
551 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
553 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
555 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
557 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
559 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
561 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
562 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
564 * New language supported: da.
566 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
567 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
569 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
570 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
572 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
575 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
577 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
578 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
581 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
583 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
584 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
585 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
586 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
587 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
588 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
589 longstanding security problems.
591 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
593 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
594 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
595 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
596 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
597 extracting a new directory.
599 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
600 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
601 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
603 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
604 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
606 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
607 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
608 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
609 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
610 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
611 names have multibyte chars.
613 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
614 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
615 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
616 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
617 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
618 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
619 are also escaped as needed.
621 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
622 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
625 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
627 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
628 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
631 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
633 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
634 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
635 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
638 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
640 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
641 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
642 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
643 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
646 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
648 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
650 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
652 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
654 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
655 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
656 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
657 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
658 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
659 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
660 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
661 and which rejects large files.
663 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
664 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
665 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
666 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
668 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
669 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
670 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
672 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
674 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
677 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
679 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
680 for compatibility with paxutils.
682 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
683 if no explicit operands were given.
685 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
686 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
687 even if they begin with `-'.
689 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
690 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
691 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
692 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
693 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
694 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
697 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
699 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
700 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
701 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
704 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
706 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
707 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
709 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
712 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
713 numeric header field.
716 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
718 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
719 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
720 the original file or directory.
723 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
725 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
727 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
728 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
730 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
733 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
735 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
736 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
737 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
739 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
740 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
741 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
742 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
743 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
744 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
746 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
747 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
748 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
749 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
751 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
752 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
753 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
755 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
757 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
760 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
762 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
765 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
767 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
768 this matches historical practice.
771 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
773 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
774 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
775 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
778 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
780 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
783 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
787 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
789 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
790 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
791 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
792 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
793 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
794 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
795 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
796 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
797 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
798 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
799 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
801 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
804 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
805 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
808 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
809 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
810 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
811 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
814 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
815 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
816 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
817 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
818 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
819 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
822 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
823 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
824 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
825 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
826 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
827 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
828 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
829 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
830 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
833 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
834 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
835 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
836 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
837 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
838 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
839 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
840 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
842 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
844 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
846 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
847 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
848 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
849 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
850 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
852 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
854 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
856 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
857 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
858 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
861 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
863 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
865 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
866 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
867 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
868 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
870 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
872 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
874 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
877 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
879 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
881 * Several Makefile cleanups.
883 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
887 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
888 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
889 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
890 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
891 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
895 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
897 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
898 for it will eventually be removed.
900 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
901 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
903 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
904 after they are added to the archive.
906 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
909 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
910 is being read or written.
912 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
913 omitted from the archive.
915 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
916 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
918 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
919 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
921 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
922 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
923 around to the beginning.
925 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
926 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
927 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
929 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
930 their original values after dumping the file.
932 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
935 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
936 modification and access times.
938 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
939 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
940 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
943 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
945 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
946 +newer-mtime work right.
948 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
950 * Sparse files now work correctly.
952 * +volume is now called +label.
954 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
955 what +exclude used to do.
957 * Exit status is now correct.
959 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
961 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
963 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
964 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
965 point instead of waiting for a write error.
967 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
968 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
969 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
970 all our backups at the FSF.
972 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
973 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
974 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
976 * See ChangeLog for more details.
980 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
981 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
983 This file is part of GNU tar.
985 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
986 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
987 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
990 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
991 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
992 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
993 GNU General Public License for more details.
995 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
996 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
997 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
998 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1002 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1003 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1004 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1005 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1006 time-stamp-end: "\n"