1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2018-04-07
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'.
19 version 1.30 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2017-12-17
21 * Member names containing '..' components are now skipped when extracting.
23 This fixes tar's behavior to match its documentation, and is a bit
24 safer when extracting untrusted archives over old files (an unsafe
25 practice that the tar manual has long recommended against).
27 * Report erroneous use of position-sensitive options.
29 During archive creation or update, tar keeps track of positional
30 options (see the manual, subsection 3.4.4 "Position-Sensitive
31 Options"), and reports those that had no effect. For example, when
34 tar -cf a.tar . --exclude '*.o'
36 tar will create the archive, but will exit with status 2, having
37 issued the following error message
39 tar: The following options were used after non-optional
40 arguments in archive create or update mode. These options are
41 positional and affect only arguments that follow them. Please,
42 rearrange them properly.
43 tar: --exclude '*.o' has no effect
44 tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
46 * --numeric-owner now affects private headers too.
48 This helps the output of 'tar' to be more deterministic.
50 * Fixed the --delay-directory-restore option
52 In some cases tar would restore the directory permissions too early,
53 causing subsequent link extractions in that directory to fail.
55 * The --warnings=failed-read option
57 This new warning control option suppresses warning messages about
58 unreadable files and directories. It has effect only if used together
59 with the --ignore-failed-read option.
61 * The --warnings=none option now suppresses all warnings
63 This includes warnings about unreadable files produced when
64 --ignore-failed-read is in effect. To output these, use
65 --warnings=none --warnings=no-failed-read.
67 * Fix reporting of hardlink mismatches during compare
69 Tar reported incorrect target file name in the 'Not linked to'
73 version 1.29 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2016-05-16
75 * New options: --verbatim-files-from, --no-verbatim-files-from
77 The --verbatim-files-from option instructs tar to treat each line read
78 from a file list as a file name, even if it starts with a dash.
80 File lists are supplied with the --files-from (-T) option. By
81 default, each line read from a file list is first stripped off the
82 leading and trailing whitespace and, if the result begins with a dash,
83 it is treated as tar command line option.
85 Use the --verbatim-files-from option to disable this special handling.
86 This facilitates the use of tar with file lists created automatically
87 (e.g. by find(1) command).
89 This option affects all --files-from options that occur after it in
90 the command line. Its effect is reverted by the
91 --no-verbatim-files-from option.
93 * --null option reads file names verbatim
95 The --null option implies --verbatim-files-from. I.e. each line
96 read from null-delimited file lists is treated as a file name.
98 This restores the documented behavior, which was broken in version
101 * New options: --owner-map=FILE and --group-map=FILE
103 These two options provide fine-grained control over what user/group
104 names (or IDs) should be mapped when adding files to archive.
106 For both options, FILE is a plain text file with user or group
107 mappings. Empty lines are ignored. Comments are introduced with
108 # sign (unless quoted) and extend to the end of the corresponding
109 line. Each non-empty line defines translation for a single UID (GID).
110 It must consist of two fields, delimited by any amount of whitespace:
112 OLDNAME NEWNAME[:NEWID]
114 OLDNAME is either a valid user (group) name or a ID prefixed with +. Unless
115 NEWID is supplied, NEWNAME must also be either a valid name or a
116 +ID. Otherwise, both NEWNAME and NEWID need not be listed in the
117 system user database.
119 * New option --clamp-mtime
121 The new --clamp-mtime option changes the behavior of --mtime to only
122 use the time specified if the file mtime is newer than the given time.
123 The --clamp-mtime option can only be used together with --mtime.
125 Typical use case is to make builds reproducible: to loose less
126 information, it's better to keep the original date of an archive,
127 except for files modified during the build process. In that case, using
128 reference (and thus reproducible) timestamps for the latter is good
131 See <https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds> for more information.
133 * Deprecated --preserve option removed
135 * Sparse file detection
137 Tar now uses SEEK_DATA/SEEK_HOLE on systems that support it. This
138 allows for considerable speed-up in sparse-file detection.
140 New option --hole-detection is provided, that allows the user to
141 select the algorithm used for hole detection. Available arguments
144 --hole-detection=seek
145 Use lseek(2) SEEK_DATA and SEEK_HOLE "whence" parameters.
148 Scan entire file before storing it to determine where holes
151 The default is to use "seek" whenever possible, and fall back to
155 version 1.28, 2014-07-28
157 * New checkpoint action: totals
159 The --checkpoint-action=totals option instructs tar to output the
160 total number of bytes transferred at each checkpoint.
162 * Extended checkpoint format specification.
164 New conversion specifiers are implemented. Some of them take
165 optional arguments, supplied in curly braces between the percent
166 sign and the specifier letter.
168 %d - Number of seconds since tar started.
169 %{r,w,d}T - I/O totals; optional arguments supply prefixes
170 to be used before number of bytes read, written and
171 deleted, correspondingly.
172 %{FMT}t - Current local time using FMT as strftime(3) format.
173 If {FMT} is omitted, use %c.
174 %{N}* - Pad output with spaces to the Nth column, or to the
175 current screen width, if {N} is not given.
176 %c - A shortcut for "%{%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}t: %ds, %{read,wrote}T%*\r"
178 * New option --one-top-level
180 The option --one-top-level tells tar to extract all files into a
181 subdirectory named by the base name of the archive (minus standard
182 compression suffixes recognizable by --auto-compress). When used with
183 an argument, as in --one-top-level=DIR, the files are extracted into the
184 supplied DIRectory. This ensures that no archive members are
185 extracted outside of the specified directory, even if the archive is
186 crafted so as to put them elsewhere.
190 The --sort=ORDER option instructs tar to sort directory entries
191 according to ORDER. It takes effect when creating archives.
192 Available ORDERs are: none (the default), name and inode. The
193 latter may be absent, if the underlying system does not provide
194 the necessary information.
196 Using --sort=name ensures the member ordering in the created archive
197 is uniform and reproducible. Using --sort=inode reduces the number
198 of disk seeks made when creating the archive and thus can considerably
199 speed up archivation.
201 * New exclusion options
203 --exclude-ignore=FILE Before dumping a directory check if it
204 contains FILE, and if so read exclude
205 patterns for this directory from FILE.
206 --exclude-ignore-recursive=FILE
207 Same as above, but the exclusion patterns
208 read from FILE remain in effect for any
209 subdirectory, recursively.
210 --exclude-vcs-ignores Read exclude tags from VCS ignore files,
211 where such files exist. Supported VCS's
212 are: CVS, Git, Bazaar, Mercurial.
215 * Tar refuses to read input from and write output to a tty device.
219 This release includes official tar(1) and rmt(8) manpages.
220 Distribution maintainers are kindly asked to use these instead of the
221 home-made pages they have been providing so far.
224 version 1.27.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-11-17
228 * Fix unquoting of file names obtained via the -T option.
230 * Fix GNU long link header timestamp (backward compatibility).
232 * Fix extracting sparse members from star archives.
235 version 1.27 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-10-05
239 ** Sparse files with large data
241 When creating a PAX-format archive, tar no longer arbitrarily restricts
242 the size of the representation of a sparse file to be less than 8 GiB.
246 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
247 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
248 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
249 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
251 * --owner and --group names and numbers
253 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
254 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
255 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
256 present in the current host's user and group databases.
258 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
260 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
261 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
262 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
263 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
264 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
266 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
267 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
268 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
269 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
270 together with this option.
272 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
274 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
275 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
276 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
277 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
278 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
279 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
280 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
283 * Passing command line arguments to external commands.
285 Any option taking a command name as its argument now accepts a full
286 command line as well. Thus, it is now possible to pass additional
287 arguments to invoked programs. The affected options are:
289 --checkpoint-action=exec
290 -I, --use-compress-program
294 Furthermore, if any additional information is supplied to such a
295 command via environment variables, these variables can now be used in
296 the command line itself. Care should be taken to escape them, to
297 prevent from being expanded too early, for example:
299 tar -x -f a.tar --info-script='changevol $TAR_ARCHIVE $TAR_VOLUME'
301 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
303 * New warning control option --warning=[no-]record-size
305 On extraction, this option controls whether to display actual record
306 size, if it differs from the default.
308 * New command line option --keep-directory-symlink
310 By default, if trying to extract a directory from the archive,
311 tar discovers that the corresponding file name already exists and is a
312 symbolic link, it first unlinks the entry, and then extracts the directory.
314 This option disables this behavior and instructs tar to follow
315 symlinks to directories when extracting from the archive.
317 It is mainly intended to provide compatibility with the Slackware
318 installation scripts.
321 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
325 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
327 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
329 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
331 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
334 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
336 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
338 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
339 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
342 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
344 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
345 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
346 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
348 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
349 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
350 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
352 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
354 * Improve the testsuite.
356 * Alternative decompression programs.
358 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
359 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
360 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
362 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
364 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
365 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
367 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
370 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
372 * The --full-time option.
374 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
375 time stamps to the full resolution.
379 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
381 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
382 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
383 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
384 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
385 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
386 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
388 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
389 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
390 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
391 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
393 ** Symbolic link attributes
395 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
396 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
397 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
398 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
401 ** --dereference consistency
403 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
404 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
405 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
406 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
407 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
408 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
409 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
410 the implementation was not consistent.
412 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
413 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
414 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
417 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
419 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
420 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
421 invoked as in the example below:
423 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
427 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
428 symlinks to another files within that directory.
430 ** --test-label behavior
432 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
433 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
435 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
438 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
440 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
442 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
443 matches the actual volume label.
445 ** --label used with --update
447 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
448 update of an archive:
450 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
452 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
454 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
456 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
457 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
459 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
462 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
464 * Record size autodetection
466 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
467 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
468 to regular files and pipes).
472 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
473 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
475 * New command line option '--warning'
477 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
478 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
479 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
480 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
481 messages are suppressed. For example,
483 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
485 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
486 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
488 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
491 * New command line option '--level'
493 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
494 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
495 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
496 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
497 the snapshot file if it exists.
499 * Files removed during incremental dumps
501 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
502 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
503 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
504 during file system scan.
506 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
507 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
510 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
511 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
512 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
513 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
514 is issued and exit code remains 0.
516 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
518 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
519 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
520 can be overridden by the
522 --pax-option='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
524 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
525 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
527 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
528 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
530 This can be overridden by the
532 --pax-option='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
534 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
535 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
537 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
539 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
540 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
541 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
542 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
543 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
544 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
546 * Environment of --to-command script.
548 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
549 the following variables:
551 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
552 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
553 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
554 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
555 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
558 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
559 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
560 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
561 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
562 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
563 succesfully stored in the archive.
564 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
565 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
567 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
570 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
572 * Support for xz compression
574 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
576 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
577 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
578 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
579 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
581 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
583 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
584 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
585 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
587 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
591 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
592 --use-compress-program.
594 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
597 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
599 * New short option -J
601 A shortcut for --lzma.
605 * New option --no-auto-compress
607 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
609 * New option --no-null
611 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
613 * Compressed format recognition
615 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
616 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
620 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
623 * Transformation scope flags
625 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
626 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
629 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
632 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
635 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
637 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
638 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
640 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
643 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
645 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
646 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
647 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
648 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
650 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
654 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
656 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
657 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
658 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
659 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
663 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
665 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
667 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
668 of the archive file name.
672 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
674 * New option --hard-dereference
676 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
677 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
679 * New option --checkpoint-action
681 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
682 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
683 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
684 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
685 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
686 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
688 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
690 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
691 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
692 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
695 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
696 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
697 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
698 environment variable.
700 * The --transform option.
702 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
703 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
705 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
706 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
708 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
709 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
712 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
715 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
717 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
718 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
720 * Incremental archives
722 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
725 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
729 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
731 * New option --exclude-vcs
733 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
734 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
736 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
738 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
746 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
748 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
749 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
750 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
753 * Fix --version output.
755 * Recognition of broken archives.
757 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
758 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
759 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
760 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
762 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
764 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
767 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
769 * Licensed under the GPLv3
771 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
774 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
776 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
777 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
779 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
780 a full dump when both options were given.
782 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
783 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
785 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
787 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
788 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
789 option affects hard link targets as well.
791 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
792 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
795 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
797 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
798 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
801 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
802 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
803 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
804 still added to the archive.
806 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
807 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
808 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
809 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
810 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
811 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
812 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
814 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
815 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
816 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
819 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
821 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
822 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
823 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
825 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
826 members during creation.
829 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
830 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
831 the listing to stderr.
834 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
836 * Incompatible changes
840 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
841 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
845 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
846 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
847 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
848 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
849 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
852 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
853 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
854 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
856 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
857 following command line options:
859 --wildcards use wildcards
860 --anchored patterns match file name start
861 --ignore-case ignore case
862 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
864 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
865 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
867 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
868 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
869 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
871 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
872 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
874 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
875 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
876 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
877 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
879 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
881 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
882 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
886 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
887 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
888 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
890 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
892 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
894 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
895 versions it worked only with --extract.
897 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
898 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
899 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
900 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
901 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
902 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
904 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
905 as well as that about directories.
907 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
908 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
909 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
912 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
913 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
914 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
915 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
916 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
919 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
922 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
926 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
927 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
928 including another -T option.
929 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
930 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
931 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
932 dash, use the --add-file option.
934 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
935 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
937 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
938 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
939 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
941 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
942 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
943 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
946 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
947 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
949 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
950 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
951 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
952 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
954 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
957 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
958 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
961 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
962 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
963 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
964 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
965 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
967 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
968 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
970 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
971 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
972 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
973 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
974 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
975 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
976 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
978 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
979 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
980 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
981 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
983 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
984 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
985 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
986 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
988 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
989 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
990 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
994 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
995 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
996 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
997 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
998 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
999 was not processed correctly.
1000 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
1002 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
1003 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
1005 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
1006 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
1007 (for ustar and v7 formats).
1008 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
1009 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
1010 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
1011 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
1015 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
1017 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
1018 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
1021 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
1023 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
1024 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
1025 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
1027 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
1028 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
1031 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
1032 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
1033 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
1034 back up. This change fixes the bug.
1036 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
1039 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
1042 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
1043 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
1045 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
1046 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
1048 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
1049 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
1050 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
1052 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
1054 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
1055 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
1056 introduced in version 1.14
1058 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
1059 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
1060 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
1061 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
1062 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
1065 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
1066 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
1067 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
1068 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
1069 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
1070 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
1071 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
1072 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
1073 extracted copy in such cases.
1074 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
1075 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
1076 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
1077 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
1078 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
1079 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
1080 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
1083 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
1085 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
1086 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
1087 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
1088 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
1089 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
1090 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
1091 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
1093 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
1094 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
1095 the previous default behavior.
1097 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
1098 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
1099 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
1100 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
1103 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
1104 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
1105 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
1106 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
1107 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
1109 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
1110 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
1111 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
1112 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
1113 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
1114 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
1115 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
1117 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
1118 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
1121 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
1122 individual files, as well as on directories.
1124 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
1125 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
1126 option is given to configure.
1128 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
1129 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
1130 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
1131 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
1132 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
1133 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
1134 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
1135 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
1136 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
1138 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
1139 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
1142 * Removed obsolete command line options:
1143 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
1144 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
1145 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
1146 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
1147 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
1148 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
1149 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
1151 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
1152 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
1153 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
1154 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
1159 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
1164 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
1166 * New option --overwrite-dir.
1167 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
1168 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
1171 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
1173 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
1176 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
1181 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
1183 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
1186 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
1188 * Some bugs were fixed:
1190 - hard links to symbolic links
1192 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
1194 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
1195 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
1196 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
1197 exclude patterns are interpreted.
1199 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
1200 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
1201 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
1202 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
1203 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
1204 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
1205 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
1206 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
1208 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
1209 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
1210 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
1213 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
1215 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
1216 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
1218 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
1219 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
1222 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
1224 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
1225 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
1226 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
1228 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
1229 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
1231 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
1233 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
1235 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
1237 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
1239 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
1240 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
1242 * New language supported: da.
1244 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
1245 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
1247 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
1248 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
1250 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
1253 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
1255 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
1256 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
1259 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
1261 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
1262 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
1263 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
1264 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
1265 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
1266 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
1267 longstanding security problems.
1269 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
1271 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1272 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1273 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1274 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1275 extracting a new directory.
1277 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1278 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1279 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1281 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1282 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1284 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1285 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1286 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1287 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1288 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1289 names have multibyte chars.
1291 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1292 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1293 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1294 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1295 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1296 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1297 are also escaped as needed.
1299 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1300 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1303 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1305 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1306 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1309 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1311 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1312 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1313 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1316 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1318 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1319 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1320 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1321 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1324 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1326 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1328 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1330 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1332 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1333 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1334 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1335 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1336 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1337 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1338 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1339 and which rejects large files.
1341 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1342 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1343 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1344 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1346 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1347 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1348 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1350 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1352 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1355 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1357 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1358 for compatibility with paxutils.
1360 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1361 if no explicit operands were given.
1363 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1364 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1365 even if they begin with '-'.
1367 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1368 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1369 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1370 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1371 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1372 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1375 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1377 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1378 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1379 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1382 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1384 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1385 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1387 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1390 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1391 numeric header field.
1394 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1396 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1397 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1398 the original file or directory.
1401 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1403 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1405 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1406 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1408 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1411 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1413 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1414 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1415 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1417 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1418 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1419 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1420 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1421 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1422 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1424 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1425 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1426 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1427 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1429 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1430 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1431 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1433 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1435 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1438 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1440 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1443 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1445 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1446 this matches historical practice.
1449 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1451 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1452 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1453 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1456 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1458 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1461 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1465 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1467 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1468 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1469 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1470 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1471 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1472 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1473 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1474 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1475 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1476 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1477 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1479 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1482 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1483 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1486 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1487 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1488 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1489 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1492 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1493 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1494 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1495 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1496 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1497 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1500 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1501 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1502 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1503 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1504 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1505 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1506 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1507 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1508 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1511 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1512 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1513 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1514 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1515 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1516 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1517 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1518 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1520 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1522 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1524 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1525 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1526 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1527 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1528 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1530 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1532 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1534 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1535 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1536 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1539 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1541 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1543 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1544 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1545 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1546 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1548 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1550 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1552 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1555 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1557 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1559 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1561 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1565 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1566 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1567 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1568 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1569 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1573 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1575 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1576 for it will eventually be removed.
1578 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1579 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1581 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1582 after they are added to the archive.
1584 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1587 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1588 is being read or written.
1590 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1591 omitted from the archive.
1593 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1594 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1596 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1597 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1599 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1600 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1601 around to the beginning.
1603 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1604 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1605 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1607 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1608 their original values after dumping the file.
1610 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1613 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1614 modification and access times.
1616 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1617 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1618 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1621 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1623 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1624 +newer-mtime work right.
1626 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1628 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1630 * +volume is now called +label.
1632 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1633 what +exclude used to do.
1635 * Exit status is now correct.
1637 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1639 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1641 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1642 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1643 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1645 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1646 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1647 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1648 all our backups at the FSF.
1650 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1651 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1652 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1654 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1658 Copyright 1994-2001, 2003-2010, 2013-2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1660 This file is part of GNU tar.
1662 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1663 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1664 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
1665 (at your option) any later version.
1667 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1668 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1669 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1670 GNU General Public License for more details.
1672 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1673 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1677 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1678 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1679 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1680 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1681 time-stamp-end: "\n"