1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2014-02-21
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
7 * New checkpoint action: totals
9 The --checkpoint-action=totals option instructs tar to output the
10 total number of bytes transferred at each checkpoint.
12 * Extended checkpoint format specification.
14 New conversion specifiers are implemented. Some of them take
15 optional arguments, supplied in curly braces between the percent
16 sign and the specifier letter.
18 %d - Number of seconds since tar started.
19 %{r,w,d}T - I/O totals; optional arguments supply prefixes
20 to be used before number of bytes read, written and
21 deleted, correspondingly.
22 %{FMT}t - Current local time using FMT as strftime(3) format.
23 If {FMT} is omitted, use %c.
24 %{N}* - Pad output with spaces to the Nth column, or to the
25 current screen width, if {N} is not given.
26 %c - A shortcut for "%{%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}t: %ds, %{read,wrote}T%*\r"
28 * New option --one-top-level
30 The option --one-top-level tells tar to extract all files into a
31 subdirectory named by the base name of the archive (minus standard
32 compression suffixes recognizable by --auto-compress). When used with
33 an argument, as in --one-top-level=DIR, the files are extracted into the
34 supplied DIRectory. This ensures that no archive members are
35 extracted outside of the specified directory, even if the archive is
36 crafted so as to put them elsewhere.
40 The --sort=ORDER option instructs tar to sort directory entries
41 according to ORDER. It takes effect when creating archives.
42 Available ORDERs are: none (the default), name and inode. The
43 latter may be absent, if the underlying system does not provide
44 the necessary information.
46 Using --sort=name ensures the member ordering in the created archive
47 is uniform and reproducible. Using --sort=inode reduces the number
48 of disk seeks made when creating the archive and thus can considerably
51 * New exclusion options
53 --exclude-ignore=FILE Before dumping a directory check if it
54 contains FILE, and if so read exclude
55 patterns for this directory from FILE.
56 --exclude-ignore-recursive=FILE
57 Same as above, but the exclusion patterns
58 read from FILE remain in effect for any
59 subdirectory, recursively.
60 --exclude-vcs-ignores Read exclude tags from VCS ignore files,
61 where such files exist. Supported VCS's
62 are: CVS, Git, Bazaar, Mercurial.
67 This release includes official tar(1) and rmt(8) manpages.
68 Distribution maintainers are kindly asked to use these instead of the
69 home-made pages they provided so far.
72 version 1.27.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-11-17
76 * Fix unquoting of file names obtained via the -T option.
78 * Fix GNU long link header timestamp (backward compatibility).
80 * Fix extracting sparse members from star archives.
83 version 1.27 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-10-05
87 ** Sparse files with large data
89 When creating a PAX-format archive, tar no longer arbitrarily restricts
90 the size of the representation of a sparse file to be less than 8 GiB.
94 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
95 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
96 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
97 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
99 * --owner and --group names and numbers
101 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
102 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
103 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
104 present in the current host's user and group databases.
106 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
108 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
109 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
110 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
111 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
112 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
114 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
115 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
116 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
117 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
118 together with this option.
120 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
122 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
123 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
124 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
125 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
126 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
127 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
128 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
131 * Passing command line arguments to external commands.
133 Any option taking a command name as its argument now accepts a full
134 command line as well. Thus, it is now possible to pass additional
135 arguments to invoked programs. The affected options are:
137 --checkpoint-action=exec
138 -I, --use-compress-program
142 Furthermore, if any additional information is supplied to such a
143 command via environment variables, these variables can now be used in
144 the command line itself. Care should be taken to escape them, to
145 prevent from being expanded too early, for example:
147 tar -x -f a.tar --info-script='changevol $TAR_ARCHIVE $TAR_VOLUME'
149 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
151 * New warning control option --warning=[no-]record-size
153 On extraction, this option controls whether to display actual record
154 size, if it differs from the default.
156 * New command line option --keep-directory-symlink
158 By default, if trying to extract a directory from the archive,
159 tar discovers that the corresponding file name already exists and is a
160 symbolic link, it first unlinks the entry, and then extracts the directory.
162 This option disables this behavior and instructs tar to follow
163 symlinks to directories when extracting from the archive.
165 It is mainly intended to provide compatibility with the Slackware
166 installation scripts.
169 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
173 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
175 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
177 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
179 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
182 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
184 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
186 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
187 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
190 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
192 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
193 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
194 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
196 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
197 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
198 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
200 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
202 * Improve the testsuite.
204 * Alternative decompression programs.
206 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
207 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
208 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
210 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
212 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
213 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
215 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
218 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
220 * The --full-time option.
222 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
223 time stamps to the full resolution.
227 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
229 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
230 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
231 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
232 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
233 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
234 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
236 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
237 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
238 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
239 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
241 ** Symbolic link attributes
243 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
244 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
245 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
246 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
249 ** --dereference consistency
251 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
252 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
253 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
254 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
255 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
256 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
257 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
258 the implementation was not consistent.
260 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
261 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
262 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
265 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
267 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
268 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
269 invoked as in the example below:
271 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
275 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
276 symlinks to another files within that directory.
278 ** --test-label behavior
280 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
281 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
283 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
286 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
288 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
290 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
291 matches the actual volume label.
293 ** --label used with --update
295 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
296 update of an archive:
298 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
300 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
302 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
304 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
305 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
307 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
310 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
312 * Record size autodetection
314 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
315 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
316 to regular files and pipes).
320 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
321 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
323 * New command line option '--warning'
325 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
326 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
327 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
328 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
329 messages are suppressed. For example,
331 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
333 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
334 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
336 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
339 * New command line option '--level'
341 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
342 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
343 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
344 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
345 the snapshot file if it exists.
347 * Files removed during incremental dumps
349 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
350 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
351 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
352 during file system scan.
354 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
355 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
358 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
359 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
360 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
361 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
362 is issued and exit code remains 0.
364 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
366 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
367 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
368 can be overridden by the
370 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
372 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
373 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
375 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
376 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
378 This can be overridden by the
380 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
382 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
383 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
385 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
387 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
388 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
389 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
390 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
391 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
392 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
394 * Environment of --to-command script.
396 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
397 the following variables:
399 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
400 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
401 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
402 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
403 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
406 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
407 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
408 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
409 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
410 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
411 succesfully stored in the archive.
412 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
413 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
415 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
418 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
420 * Support for xz compression
422 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
424 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
425 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
426 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
427 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
429 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
431 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
432 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
433 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
435 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
439 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
440 --use-compress-program.
442 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
445 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
447 * New short option -J
449 A shortcut for --lzma.
453 * New option --no-auto-compress
455 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
457 * New option --no-null
459 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
461 * Compressed format recognition
463 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
464 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
468 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
471 * Transformation scope flags
473 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
474 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
477 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
480 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
483 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
485 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
486 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
488 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
491 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
493 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
494 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
495 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
496 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
498 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
502 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
504 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
505 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
506 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
507 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
511 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
513 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
515 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
516 of the archive file name.
520 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
522 * New option --hard-dereference
524 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
525 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
527 * New option --checkpoint-action
529 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
530 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
531 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
532 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
533 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
534 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
536 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
538 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
539 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
540 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
543 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
544 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
545 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
546 environment variable.
548 * The --transform option.
550 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
551 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
553 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
554 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
556 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
557 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
560 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
563 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
565 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
566 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
568 * Incremental archives
570 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
573 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
577 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
579 * New option --exclude-vcs
581 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
582 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
584 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
586 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
594 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
596 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
597 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
598 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
601 * Fix --version output.
603 * Recognition of broken archives.
605 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
606 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
607 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
608 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
610 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
612 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
615 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
617 * Licensed under the GPLv3
619 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
622 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
624 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
625 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
627 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
628 a full dump when both options were given.
630 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
631 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
633 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
635 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
636 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
637 option affects hard link targets as well.
639 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
640 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
643 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
645 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
646 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
649 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
650 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
651 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
652 still added to the archive.
654 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
655 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
656 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
657 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
658 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
659 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
660 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
662 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
663 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
664 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
667 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
669 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
670 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
671 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
673 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
674 members during creation.
677 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
678 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
679 the listing to stderr.
682 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
684 * Incompatible changes
688 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
689 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
693 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
694 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
695 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
696 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
697 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
700 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
701 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
702 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
704 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
705 following command line options:
707 --wildcards use wildcards
708 --anchored patterns match file name start
709 --ignore-case ignore case
710 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
712 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
713 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
715 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
716 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
717 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
719 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
720 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
722 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
723 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
724 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
725 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
727 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
729 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
730 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
734 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
735 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
736 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
738 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
740 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
742 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
743 versions it worked only with --extract.
745 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
746 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
747 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
748 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
749 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
750 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
752 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
753 as well as that about directories.
755 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
756 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
757 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
760 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
761 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
762 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
763 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
764 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
767 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
770 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
774 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
775 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
776 including another -T option.
777 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
778 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
779 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
780 dash, use the --add-file option.
782 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
783 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
785 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
786 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
787 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
789 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
790 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
791 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
794 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
795 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
797 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
798 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
799 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
800 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
802 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
805 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
806 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
809 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
810 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
811 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
812 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
813 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
815 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
816 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
818 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
819 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
820 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
821 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
822 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
823 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
824 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
826 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
827 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
828 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
829 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
831 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
832 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
833 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
834 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
836 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
837 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
838 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
842 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
843 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
844 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
845 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
846 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
847 was not processed correctly.
848 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
850 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
851 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
853 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
854 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
855 (for ustar and v7 formats).
856 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
857 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
858 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
859 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
863 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
865 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
866 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
869 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
871 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
872 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
873 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
875 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
876 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
879 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
880 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
881 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
882 back up. This change fixes the bug.
884 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
887 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
890 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
891 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
893 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
894 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
896 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
897 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
898 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
900 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
902 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
903 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
904 introduced in version 1.14
906 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
907 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
908 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
909 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
910 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
913 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
914 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
915 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
916 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
917 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
918 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
919 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
920 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
921 extracted copy in such cases.
922 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
923 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
924 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
925 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
926 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
927 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
928 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
931 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
933 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
934 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
935 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
936 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
937 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
938 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
939 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
941 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
942 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
943 the previous default behavior.
945 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
946 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
947 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
948 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
951 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
952 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
953 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
954 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
955 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
957 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
958 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
959 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
960 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
961 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
962 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
963 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
965 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
966 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
969 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
970 individual files, as well as on directories.
972 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
973 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
974 option is given to configure.
976 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
977 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
978 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
979 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
980 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
981 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
982 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
983 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
984 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
986 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
987 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
990 * Removed obsolete command line options:
991 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
992 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
993 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
994 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
995 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
996 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
997 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
999 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
1000 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
1001 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
1002 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
1007 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
1012 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
1014 * New option --overwrite-dir.
1015 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
1016 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
1019 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
1021 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
1024 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
1029 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
1031 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
1034 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
1036 * Some bugs were fixed:
1038 - hard links to symbolic links
1040 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
1042 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
1043 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
1044 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
1045 exclude patterns are interpreted.
1047 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
1048 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
1049 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
1050 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
1051 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
1052 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
1053 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
1054 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
1056 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
1057 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
1058 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
1061 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
1063 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
1064 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
1066 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
1067 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
1070 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
1072 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
1073 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
1074 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
1076 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
1077 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
1079 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
1081 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
1083 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
1085 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
1087 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
1088 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
1090 * New language supported: da.
1092 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
1093 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
1095 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
1096 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
1098 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
1101 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
1103 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
1104 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
1107 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
1109 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
1110 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
1111 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
1112 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
1113 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
1114 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
1115 longstanding security problems.
1117 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
1119 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1120 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1121 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1122 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1123 extracting a new directory.
1125 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1126 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1127 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1129 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1130 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1132 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1133 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1134 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1135 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1136 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1137 names have multibyte chars.
1139 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1140 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1141 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1142 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1143 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1144 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1145 are also escaped as needed.
1147 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1148 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1151 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1153 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1154 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1157 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1159 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1160 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1161 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1164 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1166 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1167 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1168 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1169 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1172 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1174 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1176 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1178 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1180 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1181 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1182 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1183 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1184 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1185 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1186 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1187 and which rejects large files.
1189 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1190 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1191 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1192 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1194 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1195 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1196 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1198 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1200 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1203 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1205 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1206 for compatibility with paxutils.
1208 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1209 if no explicit operands were given.
1211 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1212 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1213 even if they begin with '-'.
1215 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1216 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1217 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1218 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1219 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1220 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1223 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1225 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1226 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1227 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1230 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1232 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1233 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1235 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1238 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1239 numeric header field.
1242 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1244 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1245 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1246 the original file or directory.
1249 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1251 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1253 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1254 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1256 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1259 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1261 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1262 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1263 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1265 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1266 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1267 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1268 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1269 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1270 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1272 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1273 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1274 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1275 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1277 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1278 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1279 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1281 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1283 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1286 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1288 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1291 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1293 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1294 this matches historical practice.
1297 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1299 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1300 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1301 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1304 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1306 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1309 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1313 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1315 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1316 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1317 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1318 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1319 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1320 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1321 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1322 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1323 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1324 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1325 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1327 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1330 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1331 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1334 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1335 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1336 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1337 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1340 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1341 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1342 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1343 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1344 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1345 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1348 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1349 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1350 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1351 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1352 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1353 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1354 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1355 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1356 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1359 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1360 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1361 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1362 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1363 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1364 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1365 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1366 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1368 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1370 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1372 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1373 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1374 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1375 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1376 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1378 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1380 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1382 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1383 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1384 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1387 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1389 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1391 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1392 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1393 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1394 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1396 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1398 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1400 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1403 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1405 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1407 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1409 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1413 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1414 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1415 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1416 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1417 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1421 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1423 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1424 for it will eventually be removed.
1426 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1427 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1429 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1430 after they are added to the archive.
1432 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1435 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1436 is being read or written.
1438 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1439 omitted from the archive.
1441 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1442 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1444 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1445 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1447 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1448 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1449 around to the beginning.
1451 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1452 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1453 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1455 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1456 their original values after dumping the file.
1458 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1461 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1462 modification and access times.
1464 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1465 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1466 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1469 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1471 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1472 +newer-mtime work right.
1474 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1476 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1478 * +volume is now called +label.
1480 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1481 what +exclude used to do.
1483 * Exit status is now correct.
1485 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1487 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1489 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1490 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1491 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1493 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1494 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1495 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1496 all our backups at the FSF.
1498 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1499 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1500 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1502 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1506 Copyright 1994-2001, 2003-2010, 2013-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1508 This file is part of GNU tar.
1510 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1511 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1512 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
1513 (at your option) any later version.
1515 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1516 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1517 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1518 GNU General Public License for more details.
1520 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1521 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1525 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1526 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1527 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1528 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1529 time-stamp-end: "\n"