1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-09-13
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
5 version 1.23.90 - (Git)
7 * The --full-time option.
9 New command line option `--full-time' instructs tar to output file
10 time stamps to the full resolution.
14 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
16 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
17 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
18 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
19 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
20 the number of file descriptors. The new checks are implemented via
21 the openat, dirfd, fdopendir, fstatat, and readlinkat calls
22 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
23 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
24 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
26 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
28 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
29 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
30 invoked as in the example below:
32 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
36 Tar --remove-files failed to remove a directory which contained
37 symlinks to another files within that directory.
39 ** --test-label behavior
41 In case of a mismatch, `tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
42 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
44 The `--verbose' option used with `--test-label' provides additional
47 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
49 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
51 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
52 matches the actual volume label.
54 ** --label used with --update
56 The `--label' option can be used with `--update' to prevent accidental
59 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
61 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
63 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
65 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
66 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
68 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
71 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
73 * Record size autodetection
75 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
76 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
77 to regular files and pipes).
81 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
82 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
84 * New command line option `--warning'
86 The `--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
87 particular warning messages during `tar' run. It takes a single
88 argument (a `keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
89 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with `no-', such warning
90 messages are suppressed. For example,
92 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
94 suppresses the output of `A lone zero block' diagnostics, which is
95 normally issued if `archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
97 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
100 * New command line option `--level'
102 The `--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
103 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
104 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
105 `--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
106 the snapshot file if it exists.
108 * Files removed during incremental dumps
110 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
111 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
112 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
113 during file system scan.
115 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
116 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
119 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
120 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
121 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
122 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
123 is issued and exit code remains 0.
125 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
127 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
128 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
129 can be overridden by the
131 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
133 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
134 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
136 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
137 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
139 This can be overridden by the
141 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
143 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
144 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
146 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
148 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
149 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
150 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
151 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
152 an existing file, starting with `/' or `.'. In the latter
153 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
155 * Environment of --to-command script.
157 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
158 the following variables:
160 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
161 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
162 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
163 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
164 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
167 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
168 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
169 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
170 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
171 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
172 succesfully stored in the archive.
173 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
174 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
176 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
179 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
181 * Support for xz compression
183 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
185 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
186 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
187 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
188 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
190 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
192 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
193 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
194 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
196 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
200 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
201 --use-compress-program.
203 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
206 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
208 * New short option -J
210 A shortcut for --lzma.
214 * New option --no-auto-compress
216 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
218 * New option --no-null
220 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
222 * Compressed format recognition
224 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
225 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
229 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
232 * Transformation scope flags
234 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
235 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
238 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
241 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
244 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
246 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
247 `H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
249 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
252 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
254 Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
255 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
256 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
257 can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
259 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
263 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
265 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
266 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
267 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
268 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
272 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
274 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
276 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
277 of the archive file name.
281 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
283 * New option --hard-dereference
285 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
286 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
288 * New option --checkpoint-action
290 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
291 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
292 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
293 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
294 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
295 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
297 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
299 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
300 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
301 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
304 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
305 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
306 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
307 environment variable.
309 * The --transform option.
311 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
312 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
314 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
315 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
317 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
318 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
321 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
324 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
326 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
327 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
329 * Incremental archives
331 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
334 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
338 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
340 * New option --exclude-vcs
342 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
343 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
345 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
347 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
355 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
357 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
358 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
359 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
362 * Fix --version output.
364 * Recognition of broken archives.
366 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
367 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
368 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
369 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
371 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
373 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
376 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
378 * Licensed under the GPLv3
380 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
383 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
385 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
386 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
388 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
389 a full dump when both options were given.
391 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
392 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
394 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
396 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
397 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
398 option affects hard link targets as well.
400 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
401 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
404 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
406 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
407 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
410 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
411 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
412 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
413 still added to the archive.
415 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
416 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
417 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
418 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
419 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
420 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
421 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
423 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
424 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
425 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
428 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
430 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
431 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
432 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
434 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
435 members during creation.
438 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
439 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
440 the listing to stderr.
443 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
445 * Incompatible changes
449 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
450 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
454 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
455 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
456 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
457 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
458 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
461 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
462 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
463 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
465 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
466 following command line options:
468 --wildcards use wildcards
469 --anchored patterns match file name start
470 --ignore-case ignore case
471 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
473 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
474 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
476 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
477 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
478 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
480 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
481 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
483 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
484 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
485 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
486 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
488 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
490 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
491 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
495 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
496 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
497 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
499 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
501 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
503 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
504 versions it worked only with --extract.
506 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
507 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
508 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
509 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
510 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
511 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
513 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
514 as well as that about directories.
516 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
517 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
518 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
521 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
522 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
523 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
524 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
525 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
528 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
531 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
535 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
536 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
537 including another -T option.
538 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
539 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
540 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
541 dash, use the --add-file option.
543 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
544 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
546 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
547 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
548 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
550 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
551 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
552 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
555 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
556 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
558 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
559 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
560 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
561 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
563 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
566 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
567 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
570 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
571 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
572 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
573 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
574 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
576 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
577 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
579 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
580 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
581 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
582 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
583 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
584 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
585 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
587 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
588 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
589 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
590 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
592 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
593 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
594 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
595 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
597 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
598 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
599 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
603 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
604 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
605 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
606 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
607 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
608 was not processed correctly.
609 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
611 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
612 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
614 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
615 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
616 (for ustar and v7 formats).
617 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
618 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
619 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
620 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
624 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
626 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
627 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
630 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
632 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
633 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
634 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
636 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
637 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
640 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
641 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
642 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
643 back up. This change fixes the bug.
645 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
648 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
651 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
652 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
654 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
655 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
657 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
658 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
659 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
661 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
663 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
664 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
665 introduced in version 1.14
667 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
668 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
669 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
670 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
671 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
674 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
675 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
676 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
677 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
678 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
679 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
680 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
681 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
682 extracted copy in such cases.
683 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
684 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
685 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
686 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
687 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
688 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
689 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
692 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
694 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
695 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
696 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
697 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
698 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
699 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
700 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
702 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
703 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
704 the previous default behavior.
706 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
707 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
708 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
709 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
712 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
713 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
714 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
715 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
716 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
718 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
719 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
720 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
721 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
722 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
723 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
724 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
726 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
727 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
730 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
731 individual files, as well as on directories.
733 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
734 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
735 option is given to configure.
737 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
738 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
739 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
740 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
741 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
742 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
743 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
744 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
745 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
747 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
748 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
751 * Removed obsolete command line options:
752 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
753 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
754 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
755 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
756 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
757 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
758 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
760 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
761 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
762 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
763 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
768 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
773 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
775 * New option --overwrite-dir.
776 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
777 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
780 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
782 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
785 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
790 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
792 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
795 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
797 * Some bugs were fixed:
799 - hard links to symbolic links
801 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
803 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
804 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
805 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
806 exclude patterns are interpreted.
808 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
809 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
810 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
811 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
812 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
813 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
814 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
815 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
817 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
818 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
819 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
822 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
824 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
825 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
827 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
828 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
831 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
833 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
834 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
835 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
837 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
838 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
840 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
842 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
844 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
846 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
848 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
849 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
851 * New language supported: da.
853 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
854 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
856 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
857 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
859 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
862 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
864 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
865 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
868 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
870 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
871 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
872 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
873 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
874 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
875 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
876 longstanding security problems.
878 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
880 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
881 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
882 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
883 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
884 extracting a new directory.
886 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
887 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
888 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
890 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
891 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
893 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
894 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
895 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
896 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
897 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
898 names have multibyte chars.
900 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
901 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
902 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
903 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
904 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
905 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
906 are also escaped as needed.
908 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
909 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
912 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
914 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
915 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
918 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
920 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
921 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
922 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
925 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
927 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
928 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
929 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
930 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
933 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
935 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
937 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
939 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
941 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
942 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
943 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
944 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
945 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
946 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
947 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
948 and which rejects large files.
950 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
951 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
952 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
953 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
955 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
956 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
957 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
959 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
961 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
964 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
966 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
967 for compatibility with paxutils.
969 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
970 if no explicit operands were given.
972 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
973 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
974 even if they begin with `-'.
976 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
977 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
978 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
979 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
980 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
981 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
984 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
986 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
987 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
988 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
991 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
993 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
994 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
996 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
999 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1000 numeric header field.
1003 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1005 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
1006 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1007 the original file or directory.
1010 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1012 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1014 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
1015 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1017 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1020 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1022 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1023 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1024 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1026 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1027 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1028 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1029 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1030 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1031 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1033 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1034 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1035 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1036 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1038 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1039 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1040 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1042 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1044 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1047 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1049 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1052 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1054 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1055 this matches historical practice.
1058 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1060 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1061 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1062 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1065 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1067 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1070 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1074 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1076 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1077 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1078 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1079 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1080 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1081 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1082 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1083 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1084 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1085 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1086 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1088 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1091 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1092 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1095 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1096 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1097 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1098 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1101 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1102 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1103 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1104 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1105 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
1106 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1109 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1110 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1111 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1112 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1113 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1114 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1115 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1116 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1117 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1120 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1121 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1122 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1123 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1124 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1125 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1126 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1127 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1129 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1131 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1133 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1134 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1135 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1136 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1137 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1139 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1141 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1143 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1144 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1145 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1148 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1150 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1152 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1153 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1154 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1155 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1157 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1159 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1161 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1164 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1166 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1168 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1170 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1174 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1175 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1176 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1177 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1178 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1182 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1184 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
1185 for it will eventually be removed.
1187 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1188 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1190 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1191 after they are added to the archive.
1193 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1196 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1197 is being read or written.
1199 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1200 omitted from the archive.
1202 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1203 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1205 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1206 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1208 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1209 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1210 around to the beginning.
1212 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1213 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1214 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
1216 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1217 their original values after dumping the file.
1219 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1222 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1223 modification and access times.
1225 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1226 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1227 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1230 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1232 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1233 +newer-mtime work right.
1235 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1237 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1239 * +volume is now called +label.
1241 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1242 what +exclude used to do.
1244 * Exit status is now correct.
1246 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1248 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1250 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1251 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1252 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1254 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1255 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1256 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1257 all our backups at the FSF.
1259 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1260 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1261 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1263 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1267 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1268 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1270 This file is part of GNU tar.
1272 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1273 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1274 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1277 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1278 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1279 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1280 GNU General Public License for more details.
1282 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1283 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1284 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1285 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1289 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1290 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1291 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1292 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1293 time-stamp-end: "\n"