GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes.
Copyright 1994, 1995-1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
+
+* By default, tar now refuses to overwrite existing files when
+ extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes them before
+ extracting. There is one exception: existing nonempty directories
+ are not removed, nor are their ownerships or permissions extracted.
+ This fixes some longstanding security problems.
+
+ The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
+
+ For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
+ option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
+ removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
+ the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
+ extracting a new directory.
+
+* By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
+ when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
+ To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
+
+* Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g. UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
+ correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibytes.
+
+* The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
+ that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
+ locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
+ of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
+ older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
+ names have multibyte chars.
+
+* Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
+ now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
+ `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
+ colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
+ characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
+ Terminating characters (e.g. close-quote, colon, newline)
+ are also escaped as needed.
+
+* tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
+ Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
+
+version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
+
+* If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
+ Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
+
+version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
+
+* New translations ja, pt_BR.
+* New options --help and --version for rmt.
+* Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
+
+version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
+
+* Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
+* `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
+* If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
+* `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
+
version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
* `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
+* A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
+
* Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.