1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2018-12-21
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
7 * Fix heap-buffer-overrun with --one-top-level.
8 Bug introduced with the addition of that option in 1.28.
10 * Support for zstd compression
12 New option '--zstd' instructs tar to use zstd as compression program.
13 When listing, extractng and comparing, zstd compressed archives are
14 recognized automatically.
15 When '-a' option is in effect, zstd compression is selected if the
16 destination archive name ends in '.zst' or '.tzst'.
18 * The -K option interacts properly with member names given in the command line
20 Names of members to extract can be specified along with the "-K NAME"
21 option. In this case, tar will extract NAME and those of named members
22 that appear in the archive after it, which is consistent with the
23 semantics of the option.
25 Previous versions of tar extracted NAME, those of named members that
26 appeared before it, and everything after it.
29 version 1.30 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2017-12-17
31 * Member names containing '..' components are now skipped when extracting.
33 This fixes tar's behavior to match its documentation, and is a bit
34 safer when extracting untrusted archives over old files (an unsafe
35 practice that the tar manual has long recommended against).
37 * Report erroneous use of position-sensitive options.
39 During archive creation or update, tar keeps track of positional
40 options (see the manual, subsection 3.4.4 "Position-Sensitive
41 Options"), and reports those that had no effect. For example, when
44 tar -cf a.tar . --exclude '*.o'
46 tar will create the archive, but will exit with status 2, having
47 issued the following error message
49 tar: The following options were used after non-optional
50 arguments in archive create or update mode. These options are
51 positional and affect only arguments that follow them. Please,
52 rearrange them properly.
53 tar: --exclude '*.o' has no effect
54 tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
56 * --numeric-owner now affects private headers too.
58 This helps the output of 'tar' to be more deterministic.
60 * Fixed the --delay-directory-restore option
62 In some cases tar would restore the directory permissions too early,
63 causing subsequent link extractions in that directory to fail.
65 * The --warnings=failed-read option
67 This new warning control option suppresses warning messages about
68 unreadable files and directories. It has effect only if used together
69 with the --ignore-failed-read option.
71 * The --warnings=none option now suppresses all warnings
73 This includes warnings about unreadable files produced when
74 --ignore-failed-read is in effect. To output these, use
75 --warnings=none --warnings=no-failed-read.
77 * Fix reporting of hardlink mismatches during compare
79 Tar reported incorrect target file name in the 'Not linked to'
83 version 1.29 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2016-05-16
85 * New options: --verbatim-files-from, --no-verbatim-files-from
87 The --verbatim-files-from option instructs tar to treat each line read
88 from a file list as a file name, even if it starts with a dash.
90 File lists are supplied with the --files-from (-T) option. By
91 default, each line read from a file list is first stripped off the
92 leading and trailing whitespace and, if the result begins with a dash,
93 it is treated as tar command line option.
95 Use the --verbatim-files-from option to disable this special handling.
96 This facilitates the use of tar with file lists created automatically
97 (e.g. by find(1) command).
99 This option affects all --files-from options that occur after it in
100 the command line. Its effect is reverted by the
101 --no-verbatim-files-from option.
103 * --null option reads file names verbatim
105 The --null option implies --verbatim-files-from. I.e. each line
106 read from null-delimited file lists is treated as a file name.
108 This restores the documented behavior, which was broken in version
111 * New options: --owner-map=FILE and --group-map=FILE
113 These two options provide fine-grained control over what user/group
114 names (or IDs) should be mapped when adding files to archive.
116 For both options, FILE is a plain text file with user or group
117 mappings. Empty lines are ignored. Comments are introduced with
118 # sign (unless quoted) and extend to the end of the corresponding
119 line. Each non-empty line defines translation for a single UID (GID).
120 It must consist of two fields, delimited by any amount of whitespace:
122 OLDNAME NEWNAME[:NEWID]
124 OLDNAME is either a valid user (group) name or a ID prefixed with +. Unless
125 NEWID is supplied, NEWNAME must also be either a valid name or a
126 +ID. Otherwise, both NEWNAME and NEWID need not be listed in the
127 system user database.
129 * New option --clamp-mtime
131 The new --clamp-mtime option changes the behavior of --mtime to only
132 use the time specified if the file mtime is newer than the given time.
133 The --clamp-mtime option can only be used together with --mtime.
135 Typical use case is to make builds reproducible: to loose less
136 information, it's better to keep the original date of an archive,
137 except for files modified during the build process. In that case, using
138 reference (and thus reproducible) timestamps for the latter is good
141 See <https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds> for more information.
143 * Deprecated --preserve option removed
145 * Sparse file detection
147 Tar now uses SEEK_DATA/SEEK_HOLE on systems that support it. This
148 allows for considerable speed-up in sparse-file detection.
150 New option --hole-detection is provided, that allows the user to
151 select the algorithm used for hole detection. Available arguments
154 --hole-detection=seek
155 Use lseek(2) SEEK_DATA and SEEK_HOLE "whence" parameters.
158 Scan entire file before storing it to determine where holes
161 The default is to use "seek" whenever possible, and fall back to
165 version 1.28, 2014-07-28
167 * New checkpoint action: totals
169 The --checkpoint-action=totals option instructs tar to output the
170 total number of bytes transferred at each checkpoint.
172 * Extended checkpoint format specification.
174 New conversion specifiers are implemented. Some of them take
175 optional arguments, supplied in curly braces between the percent
176 sign and the specifier letter.
178 %d - Number of seconds since tar started.
179 %{r,w,d}T - I/O totals; optional arguments supply prefixes
180 to be used before number of bytes read, written and
181 deleted, correspondingly.
182 %{FMT}t - Current local time using FMT as strftime(3) format.
183 If {FMT} is omitted, use %c.
184 %{N}* - Pad output with spaces to the Nth column, or to the
185 current screen width, if {N} is not given.
186 %c - A shortcut for "%{%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}t: %ds, %{read,wrote}T%*\r"
188 * New option --one-top-level
190 The option --one-top-level tells tar to extract all files into a
191 subdirectory named by the base name of the archive (minus standard
192 compression suffixes recognizable by --auto-compress). When used with
193 an argument, as in --one-top-level=DIR, the files are extracted into the
194 supplied DIRectory. This ensures that no archive members are
195 extracted outside of the specified directory, even if the archive is
196 crafted so as to put them elsewhere.
200 The --sort=ORDER option instructs tar to sort directory entries
201 according to ORDER. It takes effect when creating archives.
202 Available ORDERs are: none (the default), name and inode. The
203 latter may be absent, if the underlying system does not provide
204 the necessary information.
206 Using --sort=name ensures the member ordering in the created archive
207 is uniform and reproducible. Using --sort=inode reduces the number
208 of disk seeks made when creating the archive and thus can considerably
209 speed up archivation.
211 * New exclusion options
213 --exclude-ignore=FILE Before dumping a directory check if it
214 contains FILE, and if so read exclude
215 patterns for this directory from FILE.
216 --exclude-ignore-recursive=FILE
217 Same as above, but the exclusion patterns
218 read from FILE remain in effect for any
219 subdirectory, recursively.
220 --exclude-vcs-ignores Read exclude tags from VCS ignore files,
221 where such files exist. Supported VCS's
222 are: CVS, Git, Bazaar, Mercurial.
225 * Tar refuses to read input from and write output to a tty device.
229 This release includes official tar(1) and rmt(8) manpages.
230 Distribution maintainers are kindly asked to use these instead of the
231 home-made pages they have been providing so far.
234 version 1.27.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-11-17
238 * Fix unquoting of file names obtained via the -T option.
240 * Fix GNU long link header timestamp (backward compatibility).
242 * Fix extracting sparse members from star archives.
245 version 1.27 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-10-05
249 ** Sparse files with large data
251 When creating a PAX-format archive, tar no longer arbitrarily restricts
252 the size of the representation of a sparse file to be less than 8 GiB.
256 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
257 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
258 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
259 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
261 * --owner and --group names and numbers
263 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
264 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
265 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
266 present in the current host's user and group databases.
268 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
270 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
271 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
272 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
273 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
274 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
276 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
277 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
278 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
279 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
280 together with this option.
282 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
284 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
285 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
286 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
287 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
288 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
289 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
290 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
293 * Passing command line arguments to external commands.
295 Any option taking a command name as its argument now accepts a full
296 command line as well. Thus, it is now possible to pass additional
297 arguments to invoked programs. The affected options are:
299 --checkpoint-action=exec
300 -I, --use-compress-program
304 Furthermore, if any additional information is supplied to such a
305 command via environment variables, these variables can now be used in
306 the command line itself. Care should be taken to escape them, to
307 prevent from being expanded too early, for example:
309 tar -x -f a.tar --info-script='changevol $TAR_ARCHIVE $TAR_VOLUME'
311 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
313 * New warning control option --warning=[no-]record-size
315 On extraction, this option controls whether to display actual record
316 size, if it differs from the default.
318 * New command line option --keep-directory-symlink
320 By default, if trying to extract a directory from the archive,
321 tar discovers that the corresponding file name already exists and is a
322 symbolic link, it first unlinks the entry, and then extracts the directory.
324 This option disables this behavior and instructs tar to follow
325 symlinks to directories when extracting from the archive.
327 It is mainly intended to provide compatibility with the Slackware
328 installation scripts.
331 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
335 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
337 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
339 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
341 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
344 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
346 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
348 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
349 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
352 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
354 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
355 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
356 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
358 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
359 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
360 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
362 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
364 * Improve the testsuite.
366 * Alternative decompression programs.
368 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
369 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
370 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
372 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
374 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
375 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
377 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
380 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
382 * The --full-time option.
384 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
385 time stamps to the full resolution.
389 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
391 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
392 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
393 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
394 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
395 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
396 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
398 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
399 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
400 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
401 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
403 ** Symbolic link attributes
405 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
406 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
407 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
408 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
411 ** --dereference consistency
413 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
414 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
415 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
416 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
417 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
418 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
419 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
420 the implementation was not consistent.
422 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
423 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
424 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
427 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
429 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
430 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
431 invoked as in the example below:
433 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
437 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
438 symlinks to another files within that directory.
440 ** --test-label behavior
442 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
443 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
445 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
448 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
450 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
452 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
453 matches the actual volume label.
455 ** --label used with --update
457 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
458 update of an archive:
460 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
462 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
464 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
466 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
467 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
469 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
472 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
474 * Record size autodetection
476 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
477 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
478 to regular files and pipes).
482 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
483 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
485 * New command line option '--warning'
487 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
488 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
489 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
490 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
491 messages are suppressed. For example,
493 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
495 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
496 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
498 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
501 * New command line option '--level'
503 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
504 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
505 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
506 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
507 the snapshot file if it exists.
509 * Files removed during incremental dumps
511 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
512 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
513 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
514 during file system scan.
516 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
517 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
520 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
521 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
522 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
523 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
524 is issued and exit code remains 0.
526 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
528 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
529 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
530 can be overridden by the
532 --pax-option='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
534 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
535 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
537 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
538 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
540 This can be overridden by the
542 --pax-option='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
544 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
545 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
547 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
549 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
550 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
551 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
552 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
553 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
554 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
556 * Environment of --to-command script.
558 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
559 the following variables:
561 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
562 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
563 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
564 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
565 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
568 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
569 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
570 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
571 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
572 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
573 succesfully stored in the archive.
574 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
575 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
577 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
580 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
582 * Support for xz compression
584 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
586 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
587 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
588 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
589 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
591 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
593 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
594 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
595 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
597 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
601 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
602 --use-compress-program.
604 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
607 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
609 * New short option -J
611 A shortcut for --lzma.
615 * New option --no-auto-compress
617 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
619 * New option --no-null
621 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
623 * Compressed format recognition
625 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
626 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
630 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
633 * Transformation scope flags
635 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
636 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
639 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
642 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
645 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
647 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
648 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
650 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
653 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
655 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
656 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
657 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
658 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
660 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
664 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
666 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
667 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
668 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
669 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
673 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
675 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
677 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
678 of the archive file name.
682 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
684 * New option --hard-dereference
686 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
687 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
689 * New option --checkpoint-action
691 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
692 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
693 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
694 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
695 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
696 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
698 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
700 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
701 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
702 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
705 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
706 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
707 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
708 environment variable.
710 * The --transform option.
712 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
713 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
715 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
716 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
718 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
719 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
722 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
725 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
727 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
728 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
730 * Incremental archives
732 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
735 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
739 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
741 * New option --exclude-vcs
743 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
744 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
746 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
748 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
756 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
758 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
759 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
760 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
763 * Fix --version output.
765 * Recognition of broken archives.
767 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
768 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
769 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
770 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
772 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
774 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
777 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
779 * Licensed under the GPLv3
781 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
784 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
786 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
787 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
789 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
790 a full dump when both options were given.
792 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
793 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
795 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
797 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
798 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
799 option affects hard link targets as well.
801 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
802 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
805 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
807 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
808 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
811 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
812 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
813 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
814 still added to the archive.
816 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
817 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
818 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
819 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
820 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
821 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
822 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
824 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
825 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
826 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
829 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
831 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
832 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
833 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
835 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
836 members during creation.
839 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
840 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
841 the listing to stderr.
844 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
846 * Incompatible changes
850 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
851 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
855 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
856 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
857 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
858 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
859 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
862 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
863 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
864 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
866 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
867 following command line options:
869 --wildcards use wildcards
870 --anchored patterns match file name start
871 --ignore-case ignore case
872 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
874 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
875 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
877 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
878 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
879 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
881 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
882 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
884 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
885 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
886 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
887 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
889 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
891 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
892 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
896 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
897 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
898 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
900 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
902 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
904 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
905 versions it worked only with --extract.
907 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
908 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
909 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
910 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
911 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
912 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
914 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
915 as well as that about directories.
917 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
918 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
919 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
922 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
923 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
924 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
925 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
926 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
929 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
932 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
936 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
937 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
938 including another -T option.
939 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
940 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
941 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
942 dash, use the --add-file option.
944 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
945 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
947 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
948 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
949 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
951 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
952 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
953 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
956 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
957 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
959 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
960 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
961 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
962 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
964 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
967 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
968 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
971 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
972 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
973 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
974 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
975 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
977 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
978 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
980 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
981 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
982 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
983 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
984 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
985 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
986 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
988 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
989 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
990 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
991 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
993 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
994 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
995 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
996 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
998 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
999 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
1000 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
1004 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
1005 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
1006 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
1007 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
1008 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
1009 was not processed correctly.
1010 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
1012 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
1013 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
1015 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
1016 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
1017 (for ustar and v7 formats).
1018 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
1019 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
1020 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
1021 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
1025 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
1027 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
1028 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
1031 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
1033 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
1034 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
1035 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
1037 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
1038 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
1041 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
1042 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
1043 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
1044 back up. This change fixes the bug.
1046 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
1049 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
1052 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
1053 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
1055 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
1056 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
1058 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
1059 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
1060 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
1062 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
1064 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
1065 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
1066 introduced in version 1.14
1068 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
1069 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
1070 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
1071 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
1072 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
1075 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
1076 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
1077 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
1078 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
1079 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
1080 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
1081 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
1082 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
1083 extracted copy in such cases.
1084 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
1085 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
1086 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
1087 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
1088 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
1089 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
1090 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
1093 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
1095 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
1096 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
1097 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
1098 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
1099 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
1100 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
1101 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
1103 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
1104 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
1105 the previous default behavior.
1107 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
1108 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
1109 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
1110 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
1113 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
1114 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
1115 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
1116 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
1117 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
1119 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
1120 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
1121 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
1122 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
1123 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
1124 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
1125 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
1127 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
1128 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
1131 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
1132 individual files, as well as on directories.
1134 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
1135 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
1136 option is given to configure.
1138 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
1139 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
1140 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
1141 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
1142 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
1143 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
1144 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
1145 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
1146 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
1148 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
1149 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
1152 * Removed obsolete command line options:
1153 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
1154 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
1155 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
1156 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
1157 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
1158 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
1159 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
1161 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
1162 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
1163 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
1164 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
1169 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
1174 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
1176 * New option --overwrite-dir.
1177 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
1178 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
1181 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
1183 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
1186 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
1191 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
1193 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
1196 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
1198 * Some bugs were fixed:
1200 - hard links to symbolic links
1202 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
1204 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
1205 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
1206 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
1207 exclude patterns are interpreted.
1209 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
1210 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
1211 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
1212 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
1213 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
1214 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
1215 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
1216 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
1218 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
1219 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
1220 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
1223 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
1225 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
1226 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
1228 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
1229 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
1232 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
1234 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
1235 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
1236 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
1238 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
1239 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
1241 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
1243 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
1245 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
1247 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
1249 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
1250 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
1252 * New language supported: da.
1254 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
1255 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
1257 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
1258 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
1260 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
1263 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
1265 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
1266 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
1269 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
1271 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
1272 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
1273 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
1274 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
1275 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
1276 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
1277 longstanding security problems.
1279 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
1281 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1282 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1283 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1284 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1285 extracting a new directory.
1287 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1288 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1289 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1291 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1292 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1294 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1295 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1296 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1297 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1298 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1299 names have multibyte chars.
1301 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1302 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1303 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1304 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1305 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1306 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1307 are also escaped as needed.
1309 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1310 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1313 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1315 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1316 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1319 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1321 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1322 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1323 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1326 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1328 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1329 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1330 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1331 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1334 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1336 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1338 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1340 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1342 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1343 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1344 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1345 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1346 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1347 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1348 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1349 and which rejects large files.
1351 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1352 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1353 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1354 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1356 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1357 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1358 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1360 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1362 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1365 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1367 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1368 for compatibility with paxutils.
1370 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1371 if no explicit operands were given.
1373 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1374 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1375 even if they begin with '-'.
1377 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1378 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1379 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1380 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1381 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1382 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1385 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1387 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1388 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1389 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1392 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1394 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1395 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1397 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1400 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1401 numeric header field.
1404 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1406 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1407 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1408 the original file or directory.
1411 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1413 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1415 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1416 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1418 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1421 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1423 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1424 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1425 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1427 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1428 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1429 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1430 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1431 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1432 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1434 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1435 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1436 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1437 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1439 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1440 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1441 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1443 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1445 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1448 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1450 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1453 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1455 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1456 this matches historical practice.
1459 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1461 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1462 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1463 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1466 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1468 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1471 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1475 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1477 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1478 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1479 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1480 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1481 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1482 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1483 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1484 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1485 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1486 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1487 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1489 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1492 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1493 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1496 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1497 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1498 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1499 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1502 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1503 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1504 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1505 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1506 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1507 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1510 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1511 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1512 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1513 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1514 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1515 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1516 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1517 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1518 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1521 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1522 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1523 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1524 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1525 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1526 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1527 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1528 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1530 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1532 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1534 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1535 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1536 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1537 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1538 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1540 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1542 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1544 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1545 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1546 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1549 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1551 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1553 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1554 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1555 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1556 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1558 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1560 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1562 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1565 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1567 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1569 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1571 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1575 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1576 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1577 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1578 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1579 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1583 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1585 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1586 for it will eventually be removed.
1588 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1589 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1591 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1592 after they are added to the archive.
1594 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1597 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1598 is being read or written.
1600 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1601 omitted from the archive.
1603 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1604 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1606 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1607 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1609 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1610 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1611 around to the beginning.
1613 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1614 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1615 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1617 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1618 their original values after dumping the file.
1620 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1623 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1624 modification and access times.
1626 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1627 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1628 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1631 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1633 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1634 +newer-mtime work right.
1636 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1638 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1640 * +volume is now called +label.
1642 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1643 what +exclude used to do.
1645 * Exit status is now correct.
1647 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1649 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1651 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1652 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1653 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1655 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1656 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1657 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1658 all our backups at the FSF.
1660 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1661 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1662 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1664 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1668 Copyright 1994-2001, 2003-2010, 2013-2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1670 This file is part of GNU tar.
1672 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1673 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1674 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
1675 (at your option) any later version.
1677 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1678 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1679 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1680 GNU General Public License for more details.
1682 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1683 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1687 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1688 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1689 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1690 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1691 time-stamp-end: "\n"