1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes.
2 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004
3 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end for copying conditions.
6 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
8 version 1.14.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, <DATE>
10 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
11 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
14 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
15 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
16 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
17 back up. This change fixes the bug.
19 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
23 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
25 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
26 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
27 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
28 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
29 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
30 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
31 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
33 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
34 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
35 the previous default behavior.
37 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
38 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
39 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
40 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
43 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
44 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
45 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
46 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
47 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
49 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
50 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
51 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
52 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
53 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
54 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
55 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
57 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
58 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
61 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
62 individual files, as well as on directories.
64 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
65 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
66 option is given to configure.
68 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
69 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
70 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
71 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
72 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
73 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
74 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
75 the full path name of the utility, e.g. ./configure
76 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
78 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
79 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
82 * Removed obsolete command line options:
83 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
84 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
85 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
86 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
87 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
88 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
89 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
91 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
92 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
93 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
94 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
99 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
104 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
106 * New option --overwrite-dir.
107 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
108 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
111 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
113 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
116 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
121 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
123 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
126 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
128 * Some bugs were fixed:
130 - hard links to symbolic links
132 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
134 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
135 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
136 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
137 exclude patterns are interpreted.
139 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
140 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
141 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
142 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
143 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
144 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
145 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
146 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
148 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
149 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
150 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
153 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
155 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
156 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
158 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
159 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
162 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
164 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
165 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
166 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
168 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
169 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
171 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
173 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
175 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
177 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
179 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
180 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
182 * New language supported: da.
184 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
185 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
187 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
188 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
190 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
193 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
195 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
196 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
199 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
201 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
202 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
203 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
204 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
205 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
206 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
207 longstanding security problems.
209 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
211 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
212 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
213 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
214 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
215 extracting a new directory.
217 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
218 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
219 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
221 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g. UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
222 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
224 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
225 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
226 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
227 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
228 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
229 names have multibyte chars.
231 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
232 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
233 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
234 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
235 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
236 Terminating characters (e.g. close-quote, colon, newline)
237 are also escaped as needed.
239 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
240 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
243 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
245 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
246 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
249 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
251 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
252 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
253 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
256 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
258 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
259 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
260 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
261 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
264 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
266 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
268 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
270 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
272 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
273 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
274 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
275 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
276 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
277 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
278 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
279 and which rejects large files.
281 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
282 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
283 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
284 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
286 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
287 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
288 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
290 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
292 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
295 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
297 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
298 for compatibility with paxutils.
300 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
301 if no explicit operands were given.
303 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
304 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
305 even if they begin with `-'.
307 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
308 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
309 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
310 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
311 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
312 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
315 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
317 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
318 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
319 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
322 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
324 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
325 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
327 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
330 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
331 numeric header field.
334 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
336 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
337 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
338 the original file or directory.
341 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
343 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
345 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
346 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
348 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
351 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
353 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
354 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
355 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
357 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
358 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
359 The symbolic format (e.g. "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
360 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
361 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
362 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
364 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
365 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
366 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
367 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
369 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
370 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
371 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
373 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
375 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
378 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
380 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
383 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
385 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
386 this matches historical practice.
389 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
391 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
392 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
393 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
396 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
398 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
401 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
405 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
407 * Support for large files, e.g. files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
408 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
409 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
410 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
411 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
412 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
413 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
414 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
415 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
416 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
417 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
419 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
422 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
423 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
426 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
427 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
428 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
429 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
432 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
433 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
434 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
435 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
436 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
437 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
440 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
441 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
442 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
443 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
444 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
445 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
446 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
447 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
448 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
451 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
452 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
453 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
454 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
455 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
456 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
457 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
458 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
460 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
462 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
464 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
465 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
466 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
467 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
468 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
470 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
472 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
474 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
475 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
476 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
479 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
481 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
483 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
484 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
485 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
486 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
488 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
490 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
492 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
495 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
497 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
499 * Several Makefile cleanups.
501 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
505 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
506 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
507 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
508 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
509 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
513 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
515 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
516 for it will eventually be removed.
518 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
519 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
521 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
522 after they are added to the archive.
524 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
527 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
528 is being read or written.
530 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
531 omitted from the archive.
533 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
534 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
536 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
537 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
539 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
540 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
541 around to the beginning.
543 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
544 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
545 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
547 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
548 their original values after dumping the file.
550 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
553 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
554 modification and access times.
556 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
557 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
558 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
561 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
563 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
564 +newer-mtime work right.
566 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
568 * Sparse files now work correctly.
570 * +volume is now called +label.
572 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
573 what +exclude used to do.
575 * Exit status is now correct.
577 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
579 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
581 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
582 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
583 point instead of waiting for a write error.
585 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
586 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
587 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
588 all our backups at the FSF.
590 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
591 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
592 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
594 * See ChangeLog for more details.
598 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003
599 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
601 This file is part of GNU tar.
603 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
604 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
605 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
608 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
609 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
610 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
611 GNU General Public License for more details.
613 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
614 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
615 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
616 Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
620 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"