1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2009-03-05
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
5 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
7 * Support for xz compression
9 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
11 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
12 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
13 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
14 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
16 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
18 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
19 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
20 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
22 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
26 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
27 --use-compress-program.
30 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
34 A shortcut for --lzma.
38 * New option --no-auto-compress
40 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
42 * New option --no-null
44 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
46 * Compressed format recognition
48 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
49 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
53 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
56 * Transformation scope flags
58 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
59 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
62 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
65 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
68 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
70 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
71 `H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
73 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
76 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
78 Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
79 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
80 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
81 can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
83 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
87 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
89 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If detected record size differs from
90 the expected value (either default, or set on the command line), tar
91 always prints a warning if verbosity level is set to 1 or greater,
92 i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
96 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
98 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
100 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
101 of the archive file name.
105 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
107 * New option --hard-dereference
109 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
110 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
112 * New option --checkpoint-action
114 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
115 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
116 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
117 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
118 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
119 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
121 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
123 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
124 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
125 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
128 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
129 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
130 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
131 environment variable.
133 * The --transform option.
135 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
136 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
138 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
139 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
141 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
142 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
145 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
148 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
150 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
151 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
153 * Incremental archives
155 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
158 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
162 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
164 * New option --exclude-vcs
166 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
167 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
169 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
171 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
179 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
181 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
182 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
183 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
186 * Fix --version output.
188 * Recognition of broken archives.
190 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
191 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
192 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
193 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
195 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
197 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
200 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
202 * Licensed under the GPLv3
204 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
207 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
209 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
210 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
212 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
213 a full dump when both options were given.
215 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
216 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
218 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
220 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
221 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
222 option affects hard link targets as well.
224 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
225 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
228 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
230 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
231 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
234 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
235 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
236 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
237 still added to the archive.
239 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
240 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
241 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
242 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
243 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
244 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
245 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
247 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
248 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
249 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
252 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
254 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
255 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
256 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
258 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
259 members during creation.
262 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
263 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
264 the listing to stderr.
267 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
269 * Incompatible changes
273 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
274 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
278 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
279 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
280 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
281 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
282 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
285 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
286 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
287 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
289 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
290 following command line options:
292 --wildcards use wildcards
293 --anchored patterns match file name start
294 --ignore-case ignore case
295 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
297 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
298 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
300 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
301 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
302 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
304 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
305 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
307 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
308 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
309 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
310 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
312 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
314 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
315 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
319 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
320 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
321 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
323 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
325 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
327 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
328 versions it worked only with --extract.
330 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
331 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
332 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
333 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
334 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
335 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
337 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
338 as well as that about directories.
340 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
341 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
342 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
345 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
346 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
347 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
348 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
349 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
352 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
355 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
359 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
360 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
361 including another -T option.
362 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
363 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
364 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
365 dash, use the --add-file option.
367 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
368 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
370 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
371 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
372 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
374 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
375 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
376 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
379 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
380 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
382 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
383 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
384 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
385 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
387 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
390 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
391 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
394 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
395 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
396 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
397 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
398 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
400 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
401 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
403 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
404 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
405 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
406 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
407 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
408 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
409 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
411 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
412 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
413 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
414 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
416 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
417 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
418 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
419 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
421 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
422 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
423 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
427 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
428 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
429 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
430 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
431 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
432 was not processed correctly.
433 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
435 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
436 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
438 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
439 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
440 (for ustar and v7 formats).
441 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
442 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
443 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
444 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
448 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
450 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
451 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
454 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
456 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
457 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
458 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
460 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
461 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
464 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
465 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
466 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
467 back up. This change fixes the bug.
469 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
472 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
475 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
476 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
478 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
479 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
481 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
482 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
483 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
485 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
487 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
488 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
489 introduced in version 1.14
491 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
492 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
493 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
494 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
495 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
498 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
499 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
500 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
501 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
502 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
503 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
504 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
505 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
506 extracted copy in such cases.
507 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
508 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
509 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
510 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
511 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
512 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
513 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
516 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
518 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
519 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
520 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
521 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
522 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
523 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
524 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
526 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
527 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
528 the previous default behavior.
530 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
531 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
532 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
533 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
536 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
537 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
538 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
539 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
540 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
542 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
543 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
544 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
545 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
546 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
547 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
548 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
550 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
551 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
554 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
555 individual files, as well as on directories.
557 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
558 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
559 option is given to configure.
561 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
562 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
563 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
564 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
565 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
566 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
567 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
568 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
569 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
571 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
572 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
575 * Removed obsolete command line options:
576 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
577 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
578 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
579 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
580 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
581 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
582 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
584 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
585 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
586 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
587 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
592 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
597 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
599 * New option --overwrite-dir.
600 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
601 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
604 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
606 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
609 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
614 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
616 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
619 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
621 * Some bugs were fixed:
623 - hard links to symbolic links
625 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
627 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
628 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
629 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
630 exclude patterns are interpreted.
632 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
633 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
634 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
635 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
636 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
637 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
638 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
639 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
641 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
642 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
643 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
646 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
648 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
649 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
651 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
652 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
655 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
657 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
658 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
659 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
661 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
662 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
664 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
666 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
668 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
670 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
672 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
673 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
675 * New language supported: da.
677 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
678 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
680 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
681 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
683 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
686 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
688 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
689 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
692 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
694 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
695 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
696 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
697 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
698 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
699 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
700 longstanding security problems.
702 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
704 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
705 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
706 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
707 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
708 extracting a new directory.
710 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
711 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
712 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
714 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
715 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
717 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
718 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
719 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
720 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
721 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
722 names have multibyte chars.
724 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
725 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
726 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
727 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
728 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
729 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
730 are also escaped as needed.
732 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
733 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
736 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
738 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
739 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
742 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
744 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
745 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
746 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
749 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
751 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
752 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
753 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
754 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
757 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
759 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
761 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
763 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
765 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
766 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
767 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
768 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
769 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
770 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
771 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
772 and which rejects large files.
774 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
775 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
776 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
777 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
779 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
780 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
781 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
783 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
785 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
788 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
790 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
791 for compatibility with paxutils.
793 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
794 if no explicit operands were given.
796 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
797 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
798 even if they begin with `-'.
800 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
801 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
802 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
803 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
804 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
805 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
808 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
810 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
811 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
812 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
815 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
817 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
818 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
820 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
823 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
824 numeric header field.
827 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
829 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
830 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
831 the original file or directory.
834 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
836 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
838 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
839 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
841 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
844 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
846 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
847 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
848 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
850 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
851 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
852 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
853 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
854 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
855 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
857 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
858 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
859 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
860 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
862 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
863 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
864 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
866 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
868 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
871 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
873 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
876 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
878 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
879 this matches historical practice.
882 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
884 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
885 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
886 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
889 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
891 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
894 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
898 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
900 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
901 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
902 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
903 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
904 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
905 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
906 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
907 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
908 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
909 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
910 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
912 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
915 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
916 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
919 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
920 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
921 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
922 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
925 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
926 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
927 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
928 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
929 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
930 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
933 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
934 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
935 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
936 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
937 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
938 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
939 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
940 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
941 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
944 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
945 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
946 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
947 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
948 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
949 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
950 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
951 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
953 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
955 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
957 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
958 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
959 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
960 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
961 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
963 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
965 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
967 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
968 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
969 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
972 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
974 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
976 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
977 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
978 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
979 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
981 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
983 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
985 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
988 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
990 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
992 * Several Makefile cleanups.
994 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
998 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
999 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1000 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1001 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1002 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1006 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1008 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
1009 for it will eventually be removed.
1011 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1012 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1014 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1015 after they are added to the archive.
1017 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1020 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1021 is being read or written.
1023 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1024 omitted from the archive.
1026 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1027 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1029 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1030 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1032 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1033 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1034 around to the beginning.
1036 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1037 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1038 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
1040 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1041 their original values after dumping the file.
1043 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1046 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1047 modification and access times.
1049 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1050 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1051 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1054 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1056 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1057 +newer-mtime work right.
1059 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1061 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1063 * +volume is now called +label.
1065 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1066 what +exclude used to do.
1068 * Exit status is now correct.
1070 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1072 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1074 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1075 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1076 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1078 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1079 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1080 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1081 all our backups at the FSF.
1083 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1084 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1085 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1087 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1091 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1092 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1094 This file is part of GNU tar.
1096 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1097 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1098 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1101 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1102 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1103 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1104 GNU General Public License for more details.
1106 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1107 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1108 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1109 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1113 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1114 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1115 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1116 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1117 time-stamp-end: "\n"