Your feedback will help us to make a better and more portable package.
Consider documentation errors as bugs, and report them as such. If you
develop anything pertaining to `tar' or have suggestions, let us know
-and share your findings by writing at `tar-forum@iro.umontreal.ca'.
+and share your findings by writing to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
-.--------------------.
-| Installation hints |
-`--------------------'
+
+Installation hints
+------------------
Here are a few hints which might help installing `tar' on some systems.
tar: Child returned status 2
then you have encountered a gzip incompatibility that should be fixed
-in gzip 1.3, which is not yet available as of this writing. You can
-work around the incompatibility by using a shell command like
-`gzip -d <file.tar.gz | tar -xzf -'.
+in gzip test version 1.3, which as of this writing is available at
+<ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>. You can work around the
+incompatibility by using a shell command like
+ `gzip -d <file.tar.gz | tar -xzf -'.
* Solaris issues.
-If you are compiling with GCC, you may need to upgrade GCC to 2.95.2
-or later before compiling GNU tar, as GNU tar exercises many features
-that can cause problems with older GCC versions, mostly having to do
-with mutations to Solaris system include files.
+GNU tar exercises many features that can cause problems with older GCC
+versions. In particular, GCC 2.8.1 (sparc, -O1 or -O2) is known to
+miscompile GNU tar. No compiler-related problems have been reported
+when using GCC 2.95.2 or later.
Recent versions of Solaris tar sport a new -E option to generate
extended headers in an undocumented format. GNU tar does not
Platform Compiler LDFLAGS
(any) Gnu C -static
- AIX (vendor) "-bnso -bI:/lib/syscalls.exp"
+ AIX (vendor) -bnso -bI:/lib/syscalls.exp
HPUX (vendor) -Wl,-a,archive
IRIX (vendor) -non_shared
OSF (vendor) -non_shared
Solaris (vendor) -Bstatic
SunOS (vendor) -Bstatic
-* Failed `incremen.sh'.
+* Failed test `incremen.sh'.
In an NFS environment, lack of synchronization between machine clocks
might create difficulties to any tool comparing dates and file time stamps,
-like `tar' in incremental dumps. This has been a recurrent problem in
-GNU Makefiles for the last few years. We would like a general solution.
+like `tar' in incremental dumps. This has been a recurrent problem with
+GNU Make for the last few years. We would like a general solution.
* BSD compatibility matters.
the real compressed swap file; there is no reason to back it up, so
the simplest workaround is to avoid tarring this file.
-.------------------.
-| Special topics. |
-`------------------'
+
+Special topics
+--------------
Here are a few special matters about GNU `tar', not related to build
matters. See previous section for such.