1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2019-11-27
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
7 version 1.32 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2019-02-23
9 * Fix the use of --checkpoint without explicit --checkpoint-action
11 * Fix extraction with the -U option
13 See http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2019-01/msg00015.html,
16 * Fix iconv usage on BSD-based systems
18 * Fix possible NULL dereference (savannah bug #55369)
20 * Improve the testsuite
23 version 1.31 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2019-01-02
25 * Fix heap-buffer-overrun with --one-top-level.
26 Bug introduced with the addition of that option in 1.28.
28 * Support for zstd compression
30 New option '--zstd' instructs tar to use zstd as compression program.
31 When listing, extractng and comparing, zstd compressed archives are
32 recognized automatically.
33 When '-a' option is in effect, zstd compression is selected if the
34 destination archive name ends in '.zst' or '.tzst'.
36 * The -K option interacts properly with member names given in the command line
38 Names of members to extract can be specified along with the "-K NAME"
39 option. In this case, tar will extract NAME and those of named members
40 that appear in the archive after it, which is consistent with the
41 semantics of the option.
43 Previous versions of tar extracted NAME, those of named members that
44 appeared before it, and everything after it.
48 When creating archives with the --sparse option, previous versions of
49 tar would loop endlessly if a sparse file had been truncated while
53 version 1.30 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2017-12-17
55 * Member names containing '..' components are now skipped when extracting.
57 This fixes tar's behavior to match its documentation, and is a bit
58 safer when extracting untrusted archives over old files (an unsafe
59 practice that the tar manual has long recommended against).
61 * Report erroneous use of position-sensitive options.
63 During archive creation or update, tar keeps track of positional
64 options (see the manual, subsection 3.4.4 "Position-Sensitive
65 Options"), and reports those that had no effect. For example, when
68 tar -cf a.tar . --exclude '*.o'
70 tar will create the archive, but will exit with status 2, having
71 issued the following error message
73 tar: The following options were used after non-optional
74 arguments in archive create or update mode. These options are
75 positional and affect only arguments that follow them. Please,
76 rearrange them properly.
77 tar: --exclude '*.o' has no effect
78 tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
80 * --numeric-owner now affects private headers too.
82 This helps the output of 'tar' to be more deterministic.
84 * Fixed the --delay-directory-restore option
86 In some cases tar would restore the directory permissions too early,
87 causing subsequent link extractions in that directory to fail.
89 * The --warnings=failed-read option
91 This new warning control option suppresses warning messages about
92 unreadable files and directories. It has effect only if used together
93 with the --ignore-failed-read option.
95 * The --warnings=none option now suppresses all warnings
97 This includes warnings about unreadable files produced when
98 --ignore-failed-read is in effect. To output these, use
99 --warnings=none --warnings=no-failed-read.
101 * Fix reporting of hardlink mismatches during compare
103 Tar reported incorrect target file name in the 'Not linked to'
107 version 1.29 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2016-05-16
109 * New options: --verbatim-files-from, --no-verbatim-files-from
111 The --verbatim-files-from option instructs tar to treat each line read
112 from a file list as a file name, even if it starts with a dash.
114 File lists are supplied with the --files-from (-T) option. By
115 default, each line read from a file list is first stripped off the
116 leading and trailing whitespace and, if the result begins with a dash,
117 it is treated as tar command line option.
119 Use the --verbatim-files-from option to disable this special handling.
120 This facilitates the use of tar with file lists created automatically
121 (e.g. by find(1) command).
123 This option affects all --files-from options that occur after it in
124 the command line. Its effect is reverted by the
125 --no-verbatim-files-from option.
127 * --null option reads file names verbatim
129 The --null option implies --verbatim-files-from. I.e. each line
130 read from null-delimited file lists is treated as a file name.
132 This restores the documented behavior, which was broken in version
135 * New options: --owner-map=FILE and --group-map=FILE
137 These two options provide fine-grained control over what user/group
138 names (or IDs) should be mapped when adding files to archive.
140 For both options, FILE is a plain text file with user or group
141 mappings. Empty lines are ignored. Comments are introduced with
142 # sign (unless quoted) and extend to the end of the corresponding
143 line. Each non-empty line defines translation for a single UID (GID).
144 It must consist of two fields, delimited by any amount of whitespace:
146 OLDNAME NEWNAME[:NEWID]
148 OLDNAME is either a valid user (group) name or a ID prefixed with +. Unless
149 NEWID is supplied, NEWNAME must also be either a valid name or a
150 +ID. Otherwise, both NEWNAME and NEWID need not be listed in the
151 system user database.
153 * New option --clamp-mtime
155 The new --clamp-mtime option changes the behavior of --mtime to only
156 use the time specified if the file mtime is newer than the given time.
157 The --clamp-mtime option can only be used together with --mtime.
159 Typical use case is to make builds reproducible: to loose less
160 information, it's better to keep the original date of an archive,
161 except for files modified during the build process. In that case, using
162 reference (and thus reproducible) timestamps for the latter is good
165 See <https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds> for more information.
167 * Deprecated --preserve option removed
169 * Sparse file detection
171 Tar now uses SEEK_DATA/SEEK_HOLE on systems that support it. This
172 allows for considerable speed-up in sparse-file detection.
174 New option --hole-detection is provided, that allows the user to
175 select the algorithm used for hole detection. Available arguments
178 --hole-detection=seek
179 Use lseek(2) SEEK_DATA and SEEK_HOLE "whence" parameters.
182 Scan entire file before storing it to determine where holes
185 The default is to use "seek" whenever possible, and fall back to
189 version 1.28, 2014-07-28
191 * New checkpoint action: totals
193 The --checkpoint-action=totals option instructs tar to output the
194 total number of bytes transferred at each checkpoint.
196 * Extended checkpoint format specification.
198 New conversion specifiers are implemented. Some of them take
199 optional arguments, supplied in curly braces between the percent
200 sign and the specifier letter.
202 %d - Number of seconds since tar started.
203 %{r,w,d}T - I/O totals; optional arguments supply prefixes
204 to be used before number of bytes read, written and
205 deleted, correspondingly.
206 %{FMT}t - Current local time using FMT as strftime(3) format.
207 If {FMT} is omitted, use %c.
208 %{N}* - Pad output with spaces to the Nth column, or to the
209 current screen width, if {N} is not given.
210 %c - A shortcut for "%{%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}t: %ds, %{read,wrote}T%*\r"
212 * New option --one-top-level
214 The option --one-top-level tells tar to extract all files into a
215 subdirectory named by the base name of the archive (minus standard
216 compression suffixes recognizable by --auto-compress). When used with
217 an argument, as in --one-top-level=DIR, the files are extracted into the
218 supplied DIRectory. This ensures that no archive members are
219 extracted outside of the specified directory, even if the archive is
220 crafted so as to put them elsewhere.
224 The --sort=ORDER option instructs tar to sort directory entries
225 according to ORDER. It takes effect when creating archives.
226 Available ORDERs are: none (the default), name and inode. The
227 latter may be absent, if the underlying system does not provide
228 the necessary information.
230 Using --sort=name ensures the member ordering in the created archive
231 is uniform and reproducible. Using --sort=inode reduces the number
232 of disk seeks made when creating the archive and thus can considerably
233 speed up archivation.
235 * New exclusion options
237 --exclude-ignore=FILE Before dumping a directory check if it
238 contains FILE, and if so read exclude
239 patterns for this directory from FILE.
240 --exclude-ignore-recursive=FILE
241 Same as above, but the exclusion patterns
242 read from FILE remain in effect for any
243 subdirectory, recursively.
244 --exclude-vcs-ignores Read exclude tags from VCS ignore files,
245 where such files exist. Supported VCS's
246 are: CVS, Git, Bazaar, Mercurial.
249 * Tar refuses to read input from and write output to a tty device.
253 This release includes official tar(1) and rmt(8) manpages.
254 Distribution maintainers are kindly asked to use these instead of the
255 home-made pages they have been providing so far.
258 version 1.27.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-11-17
262 * Fix unquoting of file names obtained via the -T option.
264 * Fix GNU long link header timestamp (backward compatibility).
266 * Fix extracting sparse members from star archives.
269 version 1.27 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-10-05
273 ** Sparse files with large data
275 When creating a PAX-format archive, tar no longer arbitrarily restricts
276 the size of the representation of a sparse file to be less than 8 GiB.
280 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
281 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
282 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
283 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
285 * --owner and --group names and numbers
287 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
288 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
289 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
290 present in the current host's user and group databases.
292 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
294 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
295 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
296 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
297 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
298 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
300 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
301 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
302 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
303 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
304 together with this option.
306 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
308 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
309 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
310 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
311 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
312 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
313 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
314 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
317 * Passing command line arguments to external commands.
319 Any option taking a command name as its argument now accepts a full
320 command line as well. Thus, it is now possible to pass additional
321 arguments to invoked programs. The affected options are:
323 --checkpoint-action=exec
324 -I, --use-compress-program
328 Furthermore, if any additional information is supplied to such a
329 command via environment variables, these variables can now be used in
330 the command line itself. Care should be taken to escape them, to
331 prevent from being expanded too early, for example:
333 tar -x -f a.tar --info-script='changevol $TAR_ARCHIVE $TAR_VOLUME'
335 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
337 * New warning control option --warning=[no-]record-size
339 On extraction, this option controls whether to display actual record
340 size, if it differs from the default.
342 * New command line option --keep-directory-symlink
344 By default, if trying to extract a directory from the archive,
345 tar discovers that the corresponding file name already exists and is a
346 symbolic link, it first unlinks the entry, and then extracts the directory.
348 This option disables this behavior and instructs tar to follow
349 symlinks to directories when extracting from the archive.
351 It is mainly intended to provide compatibility with the Slackware
352 installation scripts.
355 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
359 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
361 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
363 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
365 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
368 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
370 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
372 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
373 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
376 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
378 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
379 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
380 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
382 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
383 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
384 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
386 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
388 * Improve the testsuite.
390 * Alternative decompression programs.
392 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
393 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
394 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
396 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
398 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
399 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
401 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
404 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
406 * The --full-time option.
408 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
409 time stamps to the full resolution.
413 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
415 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
416 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
417 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
418 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
419 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
420 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
422 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
423 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
424 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
425 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
427 ** Symbolic link attributes
429 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
430 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
431 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
432 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
435 ** --dereference consistency
437 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
438 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
439 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
440 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
441 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
442 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
443 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
444 the implementation was not consistent.
446 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
447 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
448 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
451 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
453 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
454 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
455 invoked as in the example below:
457 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
461 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
462 symlinks to another files within that directory.
464 ** --test-label behavior
466 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
467 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
469 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
472 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
474 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
476 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
477 matches the actual volume label.
479 ** --label used with --update
481 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
482 update of an archive:
484 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
486 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
488 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
490 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
491 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
493 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
496 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
498 * Record size autodetection
500 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
501 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
502 to regular files and pipes).
506 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
507 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
509 * New command line option '--warning'
511 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
512 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
513 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
514 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
515 messages are suppressed. For example,
517 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
519 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
520 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
522 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
525 * New command line option '--level'
527 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
528 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
529 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
530 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
531 the snapshot file if it exists.
533 * Files removed during incremental dumps
535 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
536 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
537 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
538 during file system scan.
540 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
541 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
544 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
545 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
546 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
547 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
548 is issued and exit code remains 0.
550 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
552 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
553 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
554 can be overridden by the
556 --pax-option='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
558 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
559 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
561 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
562 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
564 This can be overridden by the
566 --pax-option='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
568 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
569 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
571 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
573 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
574 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
575 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
576 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
577 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
578 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
580 * Environment of --to-command script.
582 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
583 the following variables:
585 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
586 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
587 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
588 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
589 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
592 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
593 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
594 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
595 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
596 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
597 succesfully stored in the archive.
598 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
599 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
601 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
604 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
606 * Support for xz compression
608 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
610 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
611 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
612 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
613 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
615 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
617 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
618 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
619 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
621 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
625 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
626 --use-compress-program.
628 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
631 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
633 * New short option -J
635 A shortcut for --lzma.
639 * New option --no-auto-compress
641 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
643 * New option --no-null
645 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
647 * Compressed format recognition
649 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
650 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
654 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
657 * Transformation scope flags
659 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
660 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
663 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
666 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
669 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
671 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
672 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
674 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
677 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
679 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
680 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
681 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
682 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
684 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
688 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
690 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
691 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
692 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
693 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
697 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
699 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
701 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
702 of the archive file name.
706 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
708 * New option --hard-dereference
710 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
711 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
713 * New option --checkpoint-action
715 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
716 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
717 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
718 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
719 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
720 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
722 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
724 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
725 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
726 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
729 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
730 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
731 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
732 environment variable.
734 * The --transform option.
736 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
737 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
739 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
740 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
742 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
743 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
746 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
749 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
751 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
752 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
754 * Incremental archives
756 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
759 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
763 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
765 * New option --exclude-vcs
767 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
768 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
770 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
772 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
780 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
782 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
783 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
784 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
787 * Fix --version output.
789 * Recognition of broken archives.
791 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
792 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
793 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
794 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
796 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
798 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
801 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
803 * Licensed under the GPLv3
805 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
808 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
810 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
811 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
813 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
814 a full dump when both options were given.
816 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
817 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
819 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
821 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
822 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
823 option affects hard link targets as well.
825 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
826 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
829 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
831 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
832 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
835 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
836 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
837 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
838 still added to the archive.
840 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
841 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
842 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
843 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
844 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
845 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
846 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
848 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
849 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
850 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
853 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
855 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
856 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
857 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
859 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
860 members during creation.
863 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
864 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
865 the listing to stderr.
868 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
870 * Incompatible changes
874 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
875 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
879 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
880 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
881 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
882 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
883 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
886 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
887 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
888 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
890 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
891 following command line options:
893 --wildcards use wildcards
894 --anchored patterns match file name start
895 --ignore-case ignore case
896 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
898 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
899 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
901 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
902 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
903 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
905 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
906 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
908 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
909 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
910 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
911 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
913 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
915 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
916 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
920 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
921 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
922 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
924 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
926 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
928 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
929 versions it worked only with --extract.
931 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
932 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
933 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
934 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
935 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
936 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
938 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
939 as well as that about directories.
941 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
942 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
943 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
946 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
947 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
948 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
949 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
950 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
953 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
956 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
960 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
961 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
962 including another -T option.
963 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
964 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
965 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
966 dash, use the --add-file option.
968 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
969 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
971 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
972 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
973 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
975 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
976 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
977 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
980 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
981 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
983 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
984 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
985 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
986 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
988 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
991 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
992 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
995 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
996 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
997 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
998 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
999 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
1001 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
1002 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
1004 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
1005 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
1006 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
1007 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
1008 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
1009 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
1010 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
1012 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
1013 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
1014 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
1015 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
1017 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
1018 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
1019 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
1020 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
1022 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
1023 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
1024 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
1028 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
1029 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
1030 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
1031 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
1032 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
1033 was not processed correctly.
1034 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
1036 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
1037 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
1039 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
1040 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
1041 (for ustar and v7 formats).
1042 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
1043 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
1044 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
1045 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
1049 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
1051 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
1052 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
1055 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
1057 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
1058 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
1059 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
1061 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
1062 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
1065 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
1066 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
1067 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
1068 back up. This change fixes the bug.
1070 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
1073 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
1076 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
1077 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
1079 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
1080 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
1082 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
1083 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
1084 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
1086 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
1088 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
1089 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
1090 introduced in version 1.14
1092 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
1093 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
1094 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
1095 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
1096 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
1099 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
1100 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
1101 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
1102 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
1103 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
1104 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
1105 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
1106 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
1107 extracted copy in such cases.
1108 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
1109 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
1110 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
1111 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
1112 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
1113 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
1114 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
1117 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
1119 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
1120 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
1121 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
1122 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
1123 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
1124 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
1125 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
1127 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
1128 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
1129 the previous default behavior.
1131 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
1132 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
1133 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
1134 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
1137 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
1138 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
1139 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
1140 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
1141 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
1143 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
1144 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
1145 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
1146 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
1147 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
1148 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
1149 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
1151 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
1152 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
1155 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
1156 individual files, as well as on directories.
1158 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
1159 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
1160 option is given to configure.
1162 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
1163 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
1164 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
1165 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
1166 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
1167 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
1168 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
1169 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
1170 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
1172 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
1173 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
1176 * Removed obsolete command line options:
1177 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
1178 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
1179 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
1180 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
1181 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
1182 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
1183 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
1185 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
1186 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
1187 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
1188 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
1193 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
1198 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
1200 * New option --overwrite-dir.
1201 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
1202 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
1205 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
1207 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
1210 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
1215 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
1217 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
1220 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
1222 * Some bugs were fixed:
1224 - hard links to symbolic links
1226 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
1228 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
1229 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
1230 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
1231 exclude patterns are interpreted.
1233 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
1234 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
1235 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
1236 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
1237 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
1238 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
1239 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
1240 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
1242 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
1243 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
1244 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
1247 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
1249 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
1250 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
1252 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
1253 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
1256 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
1258 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
1259 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
1260 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
1262 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
1263 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
1265 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
1267 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
1269 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
1271 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
1273 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
1274 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
1276 * New language supported: da.
1278 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
1279 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
1281 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
1282 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
1284 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
1287 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
1289 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
1290 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
1293 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
1295 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
1296 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
1297 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
1298 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
1299 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
1300 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
1301 longstanding security problems.
1303 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
1305 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1306 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1307 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1308 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1309 extracting a new directory.
1311 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1312 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1313 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1315 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1316 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1318 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1319 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1320 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1321 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1322 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1323 names have multibyte chars.
1325 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1326 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1327 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1328 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1329 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1330 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1331 are also escaped as needed.
1333 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1334 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1337 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1339 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1340 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1343 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1345 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1346 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1347 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1350 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1352 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1353 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1354 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1355 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1358 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1360 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1362 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1364 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1366 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1367 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1368 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1369 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1370 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1371 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1372 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1373 and which rejects large files.
1375 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1376 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1377 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1378 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1380 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1381 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1382 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1384 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1386 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1389 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1391 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1392 for compatibility with paxutils.
1394 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1395 if no explicit operands were given.
1397 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1398 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1399 even if they begin with '-'.
1401 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1402 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1403 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1404 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1405 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1406 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1409 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1411 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1412 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1413 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1416 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1418 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1419 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1421 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1424 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1425 numeric header field.
1428 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1430 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1431 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1432 the original file or directory.
1435 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1437 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1439 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1440 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1442 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1445 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1447 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1448 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1449 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1451 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1452 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1453 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1454 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1455 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1456 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1458 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1459 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1460 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1461 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1463 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1464 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1465 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1467 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1469 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1472 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1474 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1477 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1479 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1480 this matches historical practice.
1483 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1485 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1486 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1487 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1490 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1492 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1495 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1499 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1501 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1502 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1503 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1504 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1505 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1506 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1507 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1508 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1509 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1510 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1511 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1513 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1516 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1517 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1520 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1521 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1522 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1523 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1526 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1527 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1528 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1529 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1530 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1531 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1534 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1535 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1536 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1537 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1538 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1539 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1540 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1541 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1542 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1545 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1546 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1547 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1548 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1549 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1550 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1551 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1552 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1554 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1556 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1558 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1559 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1560 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1561 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1562 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1564 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1566 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1568 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1569 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1570 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1573 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1575 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1577 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1578 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1579 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1580 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1582 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1584 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1586 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1589 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1591 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1593 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1595 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1599 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1600 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1601 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1602 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1603 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1607 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1609 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1610 for it will eventually be removed.
1612 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1613 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1615 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1616 after they are added to the archive.
1618 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1621 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1622 is being read or written.
1624 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1625 omitted from the archive.
1627 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1628 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1630 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1631 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1633 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1634 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1635 around to the beginning.
1637 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1638 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1639 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1641 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1642 their original values after dumping the file.
1644 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1647 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1648 modification and access times.
1650 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1651 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1652 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1655 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1657 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1658 +newer-mtime work right.
1660 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1662 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1664 * +volume is now called +label.
1666 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1667 what +exclude used to do.
1669 * Exit status is now correct.
1671 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1673 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1675 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1676 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1677 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1679 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1680 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1681 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1682 all our backups at the FSF.
1684 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1685 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1686 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1688 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1692 Copyright 1994-2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1694 This file is part of GNU tar.
1696 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1697 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1698 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
1699 (at your option) any later version.
1701 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1702 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1703 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1704 GNU General Public License for more details.
1706 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1707 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1711 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1712 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1713 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1714 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1715 time-stamp-end: "\n"