1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2016-03-24
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 find(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 * --null option reads file names verbatim
27 The --null option implies --verbatim-files-from. I.e. each line
28 read from null-delimited file lists is treated as a file name.
30 This restores the documented behavior, which was broken in version
33 * New options: --owner-map=FILE and --group-map=FILE
35 These two options provide fine-grained control over what user/group
36 names (or IDs) should be mapped when adding files to archive.
38 For both options, FILE is a plain text file with user or group
39 mappings. Empty lines are ignored. Comments are introduced with
40 # sign (unless quoted) and extend to the end of the corresponding
41 line. Each non-empty line defines translation for a single UID (GID).
42 It must consist of two fields, delimited by any amount of whitespace:
44 OLDNAME NEWNAME[:NEWID]
46 OLDNAME is either a valid user (group) name or a ID prefixed with +. Unless
47 NEWID is supplied, NEWNAME must also be either a valid name or a
48 +ID. Otherwise, both NEWNAME and NEWID need not be listed in the
51 * New option --clamp-mtime
53 The new --clamp-mtime option changes the behavior of --mtime to only
54 use the time specified if the file mtime is newer than the given time.
55 The --clamp-mtime option can only be used together with --mtime.
57 Typical use case is to make builds reproducible: to loose less
58 information, it's better to keep the original date of an archive,
59 except for files modified during the build process. In that case, using
60 reference (and thus reproducible) timestamps for the latter is good
63 See <https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds> for more information.
65 * Deprecated --preserve option removed
67 * Sparse file detection
69 Tar now uses SEEK_DATA/SEEK_HOLE on systems that support it. This
70 allows for considerable speed-up in sparse-file detection.
72 New option --hole-detection is provided, that allows the user to
73 select the algorithm used for hole detection. Available arguments
77 Use lseek(2) SEEK_DATA and SEEK_HOLE "whence" parameters.
80 Scan entire file before storing it to determine where holes
83 The default is to use "seek" whenever possible, and fall back to
87 version 1.28, 2014-07-28
89 * New checkpoint action: totals
91 The --checkpoint-action=totals option instructs tar to output the
92 total number of bytes transferred at each checkpoint.
94 * Extended checkpoint format specification.
96 New conversion specifiers are implemented. Some of them take
97 optional arguments, supplied in curly braces between the percent
98 sign and the specifier letter.
100 %d - Number of seconds since tar started.
101 %{r,w,d}T - I/O totals; optional arguments supply prefixes
102 to be used before number of bytes read, written and
103 deleted, correspondingly.
104 %{FMT}t - Current local time using FMT as strftime(3) format.
105 If {FMT} is omitted, use %c.
106 %{N}* - Pad output with spaces to the Nth column, or to the
107 current screen width, if {N} is not given.
108 %c - A shortcut for "%{%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}t: %ds, %{read,wrote}T%*\r"
110 * New option --one-top-level
112 The option --one-top-level tells tar to extract all files into a
113 subdirectory named by the base name of the archive (minus standard
114 compression suffixes recognizable by --auto-compress). When used with
115 an argument, as in --one-top-level=DIR, the files are extracted into the
116 supplied DIRectory. This ensures that no archive members are
117 extracted outside of the specified directory, even if the archive is
118 crafted so as to put them elsewhere.
122 The --sort=ORDER option instructs tar to sort directory entries
123 according to ORDER. It takes effect when creating archives.
124 Available ORDERs are: none (the default), name and inode. The
125 latter may be absent, if the underlying system does not provide
126 the necessary information.
128 Using --sort=name ensures the member ordering in the created archive
129 is uniform and reproducible. Using --sort=inode reduces the number
130 of disk seeks made when creating the archive and thus can considerably
131 speed up archivation.
133 * New exclusion options
135 --exclude-ignore=FILE Before dumping a directory check if it
136 contains FILE, and if so read exclude
137 patterns for this directory from FILE.
138 --exclude-ignore-recursive=FILE
139 Same as above, but the exclusion patterns
140 read from FILE remain in effect for any
141 subdirectory, recursively.
142 --exclude-vcs-ignores Read exclude tags from VCS ignore files,
143 where such files exist. Supported VCS's
144 are: CVS, Git, Bazaar, Mercurial.
147 * Tar refuses to read input from and write output to a tty device.
151 This release includes official tar(1) and rmt(8) manpages.
152 Distribution maintainers are kindly asked to use these instead of the
153 home-made pages they have been providing so far.
156 version 1.27.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-11-17
160 * Fix unquoting of file names obtained via the -T option.
162 * Fix GNU long link header timestamp (backward compatibility).
164 * Fix extracting sparse members from star archives.
167 version 1.27 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-10-05
171 ** Sparse files with large data
173 When creating a PAX-format archive, tar no longer arbitrarily restricts
174 the size of the representation of a sparse file to be less than 8 GiB.
178 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
179 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
180 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
181 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
183 * --owner and --group names and numbers
185 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
186 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
187 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
188 present in the current host's user and group databases.
190 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
192 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
193 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
194 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
195 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
196 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
198 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
199 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
200 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
201 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
202 together with this option.
204 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
206 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
207 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
208 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
209 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
210 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
211 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
212 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
215 * Passing command line arguments to external commands.
217 Any option taking a command name as its argument now accepts a full
218 command line as well. Thus, it is now possible to pass additional
219 arguments to invoked programs. The affected options are:
221 --checkpoint-action=exec
222 -I, --use-compress-program
226 Furthermore, if any additional information is supplied to such a
227 command via environment variables, these variables can now be used in
228 the command line itself. Care should be taken to escape them, to
229 prevent from being expanded too early, for example:
231 tar -x -f a.tar --info-script='changevol $TAR_ARCHIVE $TAR_VOLUME'
233 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
235 * New warning control option --warning=[no-]record-size
237 On extraction, this option controls whether to display actual record
238 size, if it differs from the default.
240 * New command line option --keep-directory-symlink
242 By default, if trying to extract a directory from the archive,
243 tar discovers that the corresponding file name already exists and is a
244 symbolic link, it first unlinks the entry, and then extracts the directory.
246 This option disables this behavior and instructs tar to follow
247 symlinks to directories when extracting from the archive.
249 It is mainly intended to provide compatibility with the Slackware
250 installation scripts.
253 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
257 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
259 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
261 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
263 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
266 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
268 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
270 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
271 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
274 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
276 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
277 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
278 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
280 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
281 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
282 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
284 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
286 * Improve the testsuite.
288 * Alternative decompression programs.
290 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
291 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
292 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
294 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
296 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
297 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
299 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
302 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
304 * The --full-time option.
306 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
307 time stamps to the full resolution.
311 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
313 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
314 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
315 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
316 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
317 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
318 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
320 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
321 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
322 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
323 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
325 ** Symbolic link attributes
327 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
328 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
329 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
330 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
333 ** --dereference consistency
335 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
336 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
337 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
338 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
339 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
340 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
341 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
342 the implementation was not consistent.
344 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
345 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
346 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
349 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
351 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
352 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
353 invoked as in the example below:
355 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
359 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
360 symlinks to another files within that directory.
362 ** --test-label behavior
364 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
365 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
367 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
370 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
372 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
374 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
375 matches the actual volume label.
377 ** --label used with --update
379 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
380 update of an archive:
382 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
384 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
386 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
388 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
389 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
391 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
394 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
396 * Record size autodetection
398 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
399 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
400 to regular files and pipes).
404 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
405 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
407 * New command line option '--warning'
409 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
410 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
411 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
412 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
413 messages are suppressed. For example,
415 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
417 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
418 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
420 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
423 * New command line option '--level'
425 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
426 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
427 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
428 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
429 the snapshot file if it exists.
431 * Files removed during incremental dumps
433 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
434 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
435 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
436 during file system scan.
438 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
439 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
442 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
443 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
444 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
445 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
446 is issued and exit code remains 0.
448 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
450 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
451 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
452 can be overridden by the
454 --pax-option='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
456 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
457 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
459 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
460 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
462 This can be overridden by the
464 --pax-option='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
466 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
467 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
469 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
471 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
472 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
473 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
474 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
475 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
476 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
478 * Environment of --to-command script.
480 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
481 the following variables:
483 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
484 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
485 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
486 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
487 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
490 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
491 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
492 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
493 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
494 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
495 succesfully stored in the archive.
496 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
497 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
499 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
502 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
504 * Support for xz compression
506 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
508 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
509 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
510 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
511 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
513 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
515 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
516 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
517 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
519 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
523 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
524 --use-compress-program.
526 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
529 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
531 * New short option -J
533 A shortcut for --lzma.
537 * New option --no-auto-compress
539 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
541 * New option --no-null
543 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
545 * Compressed format recognition
547 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
548 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
552 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
555 * Transformation scope flags
557 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
558 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
561 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
564 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
567 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
569 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
570 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
572 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
575 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
577 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
578 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
579 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
580 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
582 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
586 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
588 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
589 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
590 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
591 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
595 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
597 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
599 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
600 of the archive file name.
604 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
606 * New option --hard-dereference
608 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
609 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
611 * New option --checkpoint-action
613 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
614 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
615 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
616 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
617 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
618 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
620 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
622 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
623 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
624 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
627 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
628 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
629 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
630 environment variable.
632 * The --transform option.
634 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
635 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
637 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
638 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
640 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
641 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
644 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
647 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
649 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
650 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
652 * Incremental archives
654 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
657 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
661 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
663 * New option --exclude-vcs
665 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
666 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
668 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
670 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
678 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
680 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
681 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
682 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
685 * Fix --version output.
687 * Recognition of broken archives.
689 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
690 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
691 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
692 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
694 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
696 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
699 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
701 * Licensed under the GPLv3
703 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
706 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
708 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
709 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
711 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
712 a full dump when both options were given.
714 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
715 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
717 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
719 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
720 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
721 option affects hard link targets as well.
723 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
724 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
727 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
729 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
730 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
733 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
734 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
735 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
736 still added to the archive.
738 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
739 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
740 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
741 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
742 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
743 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
744 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
746 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
747 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
748 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
751 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
753 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
754 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
755 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
757 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
758 members during creation.
761 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
762 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
763 the listing to stderr.
766 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
768 * Incompatible changes
772 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
773 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
777 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
778 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
779 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
780 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
781 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
784 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
785 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
786 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
788 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
789 following command line options:
791 --wildcards use wildcards
792 --anchored patterns match file name start
793 --ignore-case ignore case
794 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
796 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
797 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
799 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
800 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
801 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
803 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
804 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
806 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
807 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
808 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
809 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
811 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
813 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
814 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
818 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
819 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
820 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
822 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
824 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
826 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
827 versions it worked only with --extract.
829 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
830 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
831 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
832 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
833 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
834 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
836 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
837 as well as that about directories.
839 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
840 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
841 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
844 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
845 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
846 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
847 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
848 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
851 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
854 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
858 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
859 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
860 including another -T option.
861 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
862 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
863 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
864 dash, use the --add-file option.
866 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
867 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
869 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
870 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
871 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
873 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
874 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
875 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
878 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
879 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
881 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
882 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
883 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
884 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
886 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
889 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
890 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
893 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
894 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
895 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
896 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
897 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
899 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
900 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
902 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
903 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
904 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
905 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
906 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
907 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
908 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
910 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
911 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
912 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
913 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
915 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
916 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
917 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
918 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
920 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
921 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
922 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
926 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
927 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
928 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
929 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
930 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
931 was not processed correctly.
932 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
934 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
935 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
937 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
938 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
939 (for ustar and v7 formats).
940 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
941 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
942 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
943 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
947 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
949 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
950 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
953 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
955 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
956 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
957 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
959 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
960 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
963 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
964 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
965 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
966 back up. This change fixes the bug.
968 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
971 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
974 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
975 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
977 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
978 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
980 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
981 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
982 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
984 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
986 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
987 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
988 introduced in version 1.14
990 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
991 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
992 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
993 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
994 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
997 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
998 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
999 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
1000 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
1001 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
1002 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
1003 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
1004 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
1005 extracted copy in such cases.
1006 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
1007 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
1008 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
1009 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
1010 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
1011 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
1012 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
1015 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
1017 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
1018 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
1019 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
1020 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
1021 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
1022 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
1023 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
1025 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
1026 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
1027 the previous default behavior.
1029 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
1030 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
1031 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
1032 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
1035 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
1036 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
1037 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
1038 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
1039 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
1041 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
1042 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
1043 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
1044 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
1045 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
1046 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
1047 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
1049 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
1050 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
1053 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
1054 individual files, as well as on directories.
1056 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
1057 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
1058 option is given to configure.
1060 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
1061 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
1062 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
1063 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
1064 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
1065 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
1066 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
1067 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
1068 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
1070 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
1071 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
1074 * Removed obsolete command line options:
1075 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
1076 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
1077 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
1078 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
1079 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
1080 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
1081 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
1083 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
1084 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
1085 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
1086 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
1091 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
1096 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
1098 * New option --overwrite-dir.
1099 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
1100 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
1103 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
1105 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
1108 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
1113 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
1115 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
1118 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
1120 * Some bugs were fixed:
1122 - hard links to symbolic links
1124 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
1126 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
1127 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
1128 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
1129 exclude patterns are interpreted.
1131 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
1132 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
1133 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
1134 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
1135 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
1136 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
1137 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
1138 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
1140 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
1141 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
1142 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
1145 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
1147 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
1148 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
1150 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
1151 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
1154 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
1156 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
1157 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
1158 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
1160 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
1161 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
1163 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
1165 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
1167 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
1169 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
1171 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
1172 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
1174 * New language supported: da.
1176 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
1177 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
1179 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
1180 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
1182 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
1185 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
1187 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
1188 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
1191 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
1193 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
1194 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
1195 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
1196 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
1197 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
1198 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
1199 longstanding security problems.
1201 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
1203 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1204 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1205 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1206 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1207 extracting a new directory.
1209 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1210 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1211 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1213 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1214 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1216 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1217 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1218 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1219 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1220 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1221 names have multibyte chars.
1223 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1224 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1225 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1226 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1227 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1228 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1229 are also escaped as needed.
1231 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1232 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1235 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1237 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1238 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1241 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1243 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1244 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1245 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1248 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1250 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1251 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1252 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1253 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1256 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1258 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1260 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1262 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1264 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1265 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1266 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1267 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1268 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1269 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1270 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1271 and which rejects large files.
1273 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1274 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1275 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1276 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1278 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1279 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1280 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1282 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1284 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1287 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1289 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1290 for compatibility with paxutils.
1292 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1293 if no explicit operands were given.
1295 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1296 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1297 even if they begin with '-'.
1299 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1300 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1301 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1302 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1303 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1304 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1307 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1309 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1310 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1311 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1314 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1316 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1317 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1319 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1322 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1323 numeric header field.
1326 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1328 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1329 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1330 the original file or directory.
1333 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1335 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1337 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1338 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1340 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1343 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1345 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1346 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1347 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1349 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1350 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1351 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1352 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1353 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1354 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1356 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1357 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1358 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1359 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1361 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1362 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1363 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1365 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1367 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1370 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1372 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1375 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1377 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1378 this matches historical practice.
1381 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1383 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1384 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1385 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1388 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1390 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1393 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1397 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1399 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1400 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1401 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1402 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1403 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1404 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1405 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1406 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1407 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1408 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1409 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1411 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1414 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1415 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1418 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1419 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1420 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1421 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1424 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1425 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1426 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1427 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1428 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1429 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1432 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1433 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1434 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1435 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1436 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1437 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1438 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1439 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1440 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1443 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1444 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1445 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1446 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1447 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1448 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1449 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1450 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1452 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1454 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1456 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1457 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1458 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1459 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1460 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1462 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1464 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1466 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1467 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1468 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1471 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1473 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1475 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1476 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1477 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1478 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1480 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1482 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1484 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1487 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1489 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1491 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1493 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1497 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1498 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1499 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1500 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1501 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1505 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1507 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1508 for it will eventually be removed.
1510 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1511 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1513 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1514 after they are added to the archive.
1516 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1519 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1520 is being read or written.
1522 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1523 omitted from the archive.
1525 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1526 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1528 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1529 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1531 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1532 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1533 around to the beginning.
1535 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1536 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1537 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1539 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1540 their original values after dumping the file.
1542 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1545 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1546 modification and access times.
1548 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1549 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1550 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1553 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1555 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1556 +newer-mtime work right.
1558 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1560 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1562 * +volume is now called +label.
1564 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1565 what +exclude used to do.
1567 * Exit status is now correct.
1569 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1571 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1573 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1574 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1575 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1577 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1578 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1579 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1580 all our backups at the FSF.
1582 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1583 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1584 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1586 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1590 Copyright 1994-2001, 2003-2010, 2013-2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1592 This file is part of GNU tar.
1594 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1595 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1596 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
1597 (at your option) any later version.
1599 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1600 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1601 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1602 GNU General Public License for more details.
1604 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1605 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1609 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1610 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1611 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1612 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1613 time-stamp-end: "\n"