1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2015-12-06
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
7 * New options: --verbatim-files-from, --no-verbatim-files-from
9 The --verbatim-files-from option instructs tar to treat each line read
10 from a file list as a file name, even if it starts with a dash.
12 File lists are supplied with the --files-from (-T) option. By
13 default, each line read from a file list is first stripped off the
14 leading and trailing whitespace and, if the result begins with a dash,
15 it is treated as tar command line option.
17 Use the --verbatim-files-from option to disable this special handling.
18 This facilitates the use of tar with file lists created automatically
19 (e.g. by file(1) command).
21 This option affects all --files-from options that occur after it in
22 the command line. Its effect is reverted by the
23 --no-verbatim-files-from option.
25 * New options: --owner-map=FILE and --group-map=FILE
27 These two options provide fine-grained control over what user/group
28 names (or IDs) should be mapped when adding files to archive.
30 For both options, FILE is a plain text file with user or group
31 mappings. Empty lines are ignored. Comments are introduced with
32 # sign (unless quoted) and extend to the end of the corresponding
33 line. Each non-empty line defines translation for a single UID (GID).
34 It must consist of two fields, delimited by any amount of whitespace:
36 OLDNAME NEWNAME[:NEWID]
38 OLDNAME is either a valid user (group) name or a ID prefixed with +. Unless
39 NEWID is supplied, NEWNAME must also be either a valid name or a
40 +ID. Otherwise, both NEWNAME and NEWID need not be listed in the
43 * --null option reads file names verbatim
45 The --null option implies --verbatim-files-from. I.e. each line
46 read from null-delimited file lists is treated as a file name.
48 This restores the documented behavior, which was broken in version
51 * Sparse file detection
53 Tar now uses SEEK_DATA/SEEK_HOLE on systems that support it. This
54 allows for considerable speed-up in sparse-file detection.
56 New option --hole-detection is provided, that allows the user to
57 select the algorithm used for hole detection. Available arguments
61 Use lseek(2) SEEK_DATA and SEEK_HOLE "whence" parameters.
64 Scan entire file before storing it to determine where holes
67 The default is to use "seek" whenever possible, and fall back to
71 version 1.28, 2014-07-28
73 * New checkpoint action: totals
75 The --checkpoint-action=totals option instructs tar to output the
76 total number of bytes transferred at each checkpoint.
78 * Extended checkpoint format specification.
80 New conversion specifiers are implemented. Some of them take
81 optional arguments, supplied in curly braces between the percent
82 sign and the specifier letter.
84 %d - Number of seconds since tar started.
85 %{r,w,d}T - I/O totals; optional arguments supply prefixes
86 to be used before number of bytes read, written and
87 deleted, correspondingly.
88 %{FMT}t - Current local time using FMT as strftime(3) format.
89 If {FMT} is omitted, use %c.
90 %{N}* - Pad output with spaces to the Nth column, or to the
91 current screen width, if {N} is not given.
92 %c - A shortcut for "%{%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}t: %ds, %{read,wrote}T%*\r"
94 * New option --one-top-level
96 The option --one-top-level tells tar to extract all files into a
97 subdirectory named by the base name of the archive (minus standard
98 compression suffixes recognizable by --auto-compress). When used with
99 an argument, as in --one-top-level=DIR, the files are extracted into the
100 supplied DIRectory. This ensures that no archive members are
101 extracted outside of the specified directory, even if the archive is
102 crafted so as to put them elsewhere.
106 The --sort=ORDER option instructs tar to sort directory entries
107 according to ORDER. It takes effect when creating archives.
108 Available ORDERs are: none (the default), name and inode. The
109 latter may be absent, if the underlying system does not provide
110 the necessary information.
112 Using --sort=name ensures the member ordering in the created archive
113 is uniform and reproducible. Using --sort=inode reduces the number
114 of disk seeks made when creating the archive and thus can considerably
115 speed up archivation.
117 * New exclusion options
119 --exclude-ignore=FILE Before dumping a directory check if it
120 contains FILE, and if so read exclude
121 patterns for this directory from FILE.
122 --exclude-ignore-recursive=FILE
123 Same as above, but the exclusion patterns
124 read from FILE remain in effect for any
125 subdirectory, recursively.
126 --exclude-vcs-ignores Read exclude tags from VCS ignore files,
127 where such files exist. Supported VCS's
128 are: CVS, Git, Bazaar, Mercurial.
131 * Tar refuses to read input from and write output to a tty device.
135 This release includes official tar(1) and rmt(8) manpages.
136 Distribution maintainers are kindly asked to use these instead of the
137 home-made pages they have been providing so far.
140 version 1.27.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-11-17
144 * Fix unquoting of file names obtained via the -T option.
146 * Fix GNU long link header timestamp (backward compatibility).
148 * Fix extracting sparse members from star archives.
151 version 1.27 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-10-05
155 ** Sparse files with large data
157 When creating a PAX-format archive, tar no longer arbitrarily restricts
158 the size of the representation of a sparse file to be less than 8 GiB.
162 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
163 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
164 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
165 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
167 * --owner and --group names and numbers
169 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
170 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
171 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
172 present in the current host's user and group databases.
174 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
176 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
177 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
178 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
179 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
180 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
182 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
183 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
184 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
185 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
186 together with this option.
188 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
190 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
191 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
192 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
193 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
194 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
195 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
196 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
199 * Passing command line arguments to external commands.
201 Any option taking a command name as its argument now accepts a full
202 command line as well. Thus, it is now possible to pass additional
203 arguments to invoked programs. The affected options are:
205 --checkpoint-action=exec
206 -I, --use-compress-program
210 Furthermore, if any additional information is supplied to such a
211 command via environment variables, these variables can now be used in
212 the command line itself. Care should be taken to escape them, to
213 prevent from being expanded too early, for example:
215 tar -x -f a.tar --info-script='changevol $TAR_ARCHIVE $TAR_VOLUME'
217 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
219 * New warning control option --warning=[no-]record-size
221 On extraction, this option controls whether to display actual record
222 size, if it differs from the default.
224 * New command line option --keep-directory-symlink
226 By default, if trying to extract a directory from the archive,
227 tar discovers that the corresponding file name already exists and is a
228 symbolic link, it first unlinks the entry, and then extracts the directory.
230 This option disables this behavior and instructs tar to follow
231 symlinks to directories when extracting from the archive.
233 It is mainly intended to provide compatibility with the Slackware
234 installation scripts.
237 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
241 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
243 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
245 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
247 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
250 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
252 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
254 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
255 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
258 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
260 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
261 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
262 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
264 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
265 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
266 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
268 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
270 * Improve the testsuite.
272 * Alternative decompression programs.
274 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
275 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
276 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
278 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
280 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
281 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
283 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
286 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
288 * The --full-time option.
290 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
291 time stamps to the full resolution.
295 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
297 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
298 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
299 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
300 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
301 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
302 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
304 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
305 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
306 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
307 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
309 ** Symbolic link attributes
311 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
312 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
313 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
314 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
317 ** --dereference consistency
319 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
320 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
321 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
322 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
323 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
324 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
325 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
326 the implementation was not consistent.
328 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
329 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
330 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
333 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
335 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
336 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
337 invoked as in the example below:
339 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
343 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
344 symlinks to another files within that directory.
346 ** --test-label behavior
348 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
349 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
351 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
354 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
356 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
358 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
359 matches the actual volume label.
361 ** --label used with --update
363 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
364 update of an archive:
366 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
368 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
370 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
372 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
373 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
375 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
378 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
380 * Record size autodetection
382 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
383 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
384 to regular files and pipes).
388 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
389 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
391 * New command line option '--warning'
393 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
394 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
395 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
396 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
397 messages are suppressed. For example,
399 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
401 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
402 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
404 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
407 * New command line option '--level'
409 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
410 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
411 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
412 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
413 the snapshot file if it exists.
415 * Files removed during incremental dumps
417 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
418 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
419 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
420 during file system scan.
422 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
423 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
426 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
427 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
428 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
429 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
430 is issued and exit code remains 0.
432 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
434 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
435 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
436 can be overridden by the
438 --pax-option='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
440 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
441 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
443 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
444 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
446 This can be overridden by the
448 --pax-option='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
450 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
451 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
453 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
455 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
456 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
457 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
458 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
459 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
460 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
462 * Environment of --to-command script.
464 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
465 the following variables:
467 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
468 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
469 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
470 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
471 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
474 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
475 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
476 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
477 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
478 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
479 succesfully stored in the archive.
480 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
481 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
483 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
486 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
488 * Support for xz compression
490 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
492 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
493 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
494 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
495 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
497 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
499 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
500 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
501 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
503 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
507 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
508 --use-compress-program.
510 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
513 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
515 * New short option -J
517 A shortcut for --lzma.
521 * New option --no-auto-compress
523 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
525 * New option --no-null
527 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
529 * Compressed format recognition
531 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
532 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
536 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
539 * Transformation scope flags
541 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
542 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
545 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
548 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
551 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
553 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
554 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
556 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
559 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
561 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
562 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
563 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
564 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
566 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
570 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
572 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
573 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
574 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
575 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
579 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
581 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
583 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
584 of the archive file name.
588 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
590 * New option --hard-dereference
592 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
593 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
595 * New option --checkpoint-action
597 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
598 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
599 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
600 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
601 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
602 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
604 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
606 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
607 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
608 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
611 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
612 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
613 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
614 environment variable.
616 * The --transform option.
618 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
619 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
621 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
622 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
624 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
625 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
628 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
631 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
633 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
634 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
636 * Incremental archives
638 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
641 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
645 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
647 * New option --exclude-vcs
649 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
650 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
652 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
654 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
662 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
664 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
665 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
666 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
669 * Fix --version output.
671 * Recognition of broken archives.
673 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
674 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
675 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
676 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
678 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
680 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
683 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
685 * Licensed under the GPLv3
687 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
690 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
692 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
693 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
695 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
696 a full dump when both options were given.
698 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
699 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
701 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
703 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
704 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
705 option affects hard link targets as well.
707 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
708 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
711 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
713 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
714 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
717 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
718 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
719 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
720 still added to the archive.
722 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
723 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
724 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
725 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
726 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
727 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
728 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
730 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
731 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
732 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
735 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
737 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
738 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
739 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
741 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
742 members during creation.
745 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
746 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
747 the listing to stderr.
750 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
752 * Incompatible changes
756 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
757 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
761 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
762 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
763 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
764 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
765 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
768 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
769 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
770 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
772 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
773 following command line options:
775 --wildcards use wildcards
776 --anchored patterns match file name start
777 --ignore-case ignore case
778 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
780 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
781 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
783 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
784 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
785 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
787 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
788 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
790 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
791 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
792 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
793 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
795 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
797 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
798 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
802 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
803 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
804 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
806 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
808 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
810 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
811 versions it worked only with --extract.
813 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
814 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
815 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
816 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
817 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
818 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
820 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
821 as well as that about directories.
823 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
824 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
825 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
828 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
829 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
830 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
831 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
832 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
835 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
838 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
842 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
843 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
844 including another -T option.
845 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
846 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
847 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
848 dash, use the --add-file option.
850 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
851 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
853 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
854 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
855 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
857 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
858 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
859 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
862 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
863 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
865 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
866 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
867 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
868 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
870 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
873 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
874 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
877 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
878 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
879 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
880 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
881 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
883 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
884 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
886 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
887 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
888 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
889 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
890 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
891 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
892 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
894 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
895 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
896 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
897 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
899 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
900 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
901 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
902 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
904 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
905 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
906 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
910 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
911 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
912 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
913 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
914 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
915 was not processed correctly.
916 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
918 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
919 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
921 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
922 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
923 (for ustar and v7 formats).
924 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
925 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
926 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
927 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
931 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
933 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
934 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
937 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
939 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
940 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
941 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
943 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
944 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
947 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
948 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
949 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
950 back up. This change fixes the bug.
952 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
955 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
958 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
959 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
961 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
962 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
964 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
965 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
966 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
968 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
970 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
971 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
972 introduced in version 1.14
974 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
975 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
976 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
977 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
978 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
981 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
982 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
983 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
984 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
985 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
986 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
987 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
988 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
989 extracted copy in such cases.
990 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
991 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
992 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
993 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
994 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
995 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
996 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
999 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
1001 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
1002 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
1003 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
1004 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
1005 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
1006 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
1007 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
1009 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
1010 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
1011 the previous default behavior.
1013 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
1014 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
1015 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
1016 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
1019 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
1020 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
1021 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
1022 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
1023 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
1025 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
1026 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
1027 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
1028 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
1029 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
1030 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
1031 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
1033 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
1034 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
1037 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
1038 individual files, as well as on directories.
1040 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
1041 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
1042 option is given to configure.
1044 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
1045 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
1046 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
1047 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
1048 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
1049 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
1050 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
1051 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
1052 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
1054 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
1055 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
1058 * Removed obsolete command line options:
1059 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
1060 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
1061 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
1062 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
1063 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
1064 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
1065 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
1067 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
1068 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
1069 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
1070 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
1075 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
1080 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
1082 * New option --overwrite-dir.
1083 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
1084 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
1087 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
1089 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
1092 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
1097 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
1099 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
1102 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
1104 * Some bugs were fixed:
1106 - hard links to symbolic links
1108 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
1110 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
1111 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
1112 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
1113 exclude patterns are interpreted.
1115 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
1116 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
1117 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
1118 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
1119 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
1120 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
1121 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
1122 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
1124 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
1125 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
1126 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
1129 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
1131 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
1132 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
1134 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
1135 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
1138 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
1140 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
1141 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
1142 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
1144 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
1145 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
1147 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
1149 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
1151 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
1153 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
1155 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
1156 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
1158 * New language supported: da.
1160 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
1161 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
1163 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
1164 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
1166 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
1169 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
1171 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
1172 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
1175 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
1177 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
1178 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
1179 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
1180 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
1181 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
1182 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
1183 longstanding security problems.
1185 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
1187 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1188 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1189 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1190 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1191 extracting a new directory.
1193 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1194 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1195 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1197 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1198 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1200 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1201 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1202 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1203 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1204 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1205 names have multibyte chars.
1207 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1208 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1209 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1210 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1211 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1212 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1213 are also escaped as needed.
1215 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1216 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1219 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1221 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1222 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1225 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1227 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1228 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1229 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1232 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1234 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1235 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1236 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1237 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1240 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1242 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1244 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1246 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1248 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1249 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1250 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1251 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1252 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1253 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1254 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1255 and which rejects large files.
1257 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1258 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1259 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1260 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1262 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1263 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1264 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1266 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1268 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1271 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1273 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1274 for compatibility with paxutils.
1276 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1277 if no explicit operands were given.
1279 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1280 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1281 even if they begin with '-'.
1283 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1284 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1285 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1286 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1287 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1288 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1291 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1293 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1294 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1295 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1298 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1300 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1301 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1303 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1306 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1307 numeric header field.
1310 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1312 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1313 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1314 the original file or directory.
1317 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1319 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1321 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1322 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1324 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1327 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1329 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1330 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1331 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1333 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1334 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1335 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1336 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1337 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1338 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1340 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1341 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1342 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1343 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1345 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1346 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1347 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1349 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1351 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1354 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1356 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1359 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1361 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1362 this matches historical practice.
1365 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1367 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1368 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1369 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1372 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1374 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1377 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1381 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1383 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1384 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1385 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1386 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1387 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1388 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1389 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1390 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1391 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1392 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1393 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1395 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1398 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1399 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1402 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1403 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1404 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1405 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1408 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1409 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1410 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1411 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1412 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1413 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1416 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1417 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1418 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1419 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1420 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1421 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1422 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1423 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1424 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1427 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1428 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1429 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1430 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1431 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1432 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1433 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1434 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1436 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1438 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1440 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1441 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1442 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1443 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1444 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1446 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1448 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1450 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1451 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1452 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1455 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1457 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1459 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1460 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1461 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1462 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1464 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1466 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1468 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1471 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1473 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1475 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1477 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1481 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1482 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1483 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1484 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1485 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1489 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1491 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1492 for it will eventually be removed.
1494 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1495 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1497 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1498 after they are added to the archive.
1500 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1503 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1504 is being read or written.
1506 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1507 omitted from the archive.
1509 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1510 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1512 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1513 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1515 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1516 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1517 around to the beginning.
1519 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1520 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1521 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1523 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1524 their original values after dumping the file.
1526 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1529 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1530 modification and access times.
1532 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1533 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1534 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1537 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1539 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1540 +newer-mtime work right.
1542 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1544 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1546 * +volume is now called +label.
1548 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1549 what +exclude used to do.
1551 * Exit status is now correct.
1553 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1555 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1557 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1558 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1559 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1561 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1562 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1563 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1564 all our backups at the FSF.
1566 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1567 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1568 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1570 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1574 Copyright 1994-2001, 2003-2010, 2013-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1576 This file is part of GNU tar.
1578 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1579 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1580 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
1581 (at your option) any later version.
1583 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1584 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1585 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1586 GNU General Public License for more details.
1588 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1589 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1593 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1594 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1595 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1596 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1597 time-stamp-end: "\n"