1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-11-07
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
5 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
7 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
8 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
9 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
11 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
12 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
13 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
15 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
17 * Improve the testsuite.
19 * Alternative decompression programs.
21 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
22 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
23 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
25 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
27 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
28 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
30 For example, if `compress' is not available, tar will try `gzip'.
33 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
35 * The --full-time option.
37 New command line option `--full-time' instructs tar to output file
38 time stamps to the full resolution.
42 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
44 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
45 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
46 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
47 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
48 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
49 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
51 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
52 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
53 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
54 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
56 ** Symbolic link attributes
58 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
59 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
60 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
61 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
64 ** --dereference consistency
66 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
67 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
68 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
69 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
70 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
71 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
72 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
73 the implementation was not consistent.
75 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
76 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
77 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
80 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
82 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
83 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
84 invoked as in the example below:
86 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
90 `Tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
91 symlinks to another files within that directory.
93 ** --test-label behavior
95 In case of a mismatch, `tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
96 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
98 The `--verbose' option used with `--test-label' provides additional
101 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
103 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
105 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
106 matches the actual volume label.
108 ** --label used with --update
110 The `--label' option can be used with `--update' to prevent accidental
111 update of an archive:
113 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
115 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
117 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
119 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
120 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
122 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
125 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
127 * Record size autodetection
129 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
130 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
131 to regular files and pipes).
135 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
136 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
138 * New command line option `--warning'
140 The `--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
141 particular warning messages during `tar' run. It takes a single
142 argument (a `keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
143 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with `no-', such warning
144 messages are suppressed. For example,
146 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
148 suppresses the output of `A lone zero block' diagnostics, which is
149 normally issued if `archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
151 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
154 * New command line option `--level'
156 The `--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
157 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
158 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
159 `--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
160 the snapshot file if it exists.
162 * Files removed during incremental dumps
164 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
165 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
166 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
167 during file system scan.
169 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
170 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
173 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
174 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
175 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
176 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
177 is issued and exit code remains 0.
179 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
181 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
182 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
183 can be overridden by the
185 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
187 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
188 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
190 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
191 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
193 This can be overridden by the
195 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
197 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
198 the Epoch or a `Time reference' (see below).
200 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
202 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
203 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
204 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
205 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
206 an existing file, starting with `/' or `.'. In the latter
207 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
209 * Environment of --to-command script.
211 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
212 the following variables:
214 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
215 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
216 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
217 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
218 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
221 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
222 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
223 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
224 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
225 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
226 succesfully stored in the archive.
227 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
228 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
230 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
233 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
235 * Support for xz compression
237 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
239 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
240 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
241 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in `.xz' and
242 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
244 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
246 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
247 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
248 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
250 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
254 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
255 --use-compress-program.
257 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
260 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
262 * New short option -J
264 A shortcut for --lzma.
268 * New option --no-auto-compress
270 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
272 * New option --no-null
274 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
276 * Compressed format recognition
278 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
279 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
283 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
286 * Transformation scope flags
288 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
289 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
292 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
295 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
298 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
300 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
301 `H' means ``do not apply transformation to hard link targets.''
303 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an `s' expression,
306 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
308 Default is `rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
309 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
310 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
311 can be changed using `flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
313 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
317 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
319 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
320 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
321 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
322 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
326 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
328 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
330 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
331 of the archive file name.
335 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
337 * New option --hard-dereference
339 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
340 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
342 * New option --checkpoint-action
344 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
345 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
346 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
347 of `--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
348 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
349 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
351 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
353 The `--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
354 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
355 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
358 The `--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
359 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
360 `--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
361 environment variable.
363 * The --transform option.
365 Any number of `--transform' options can be given in the command line.
366 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
368 The argument to `--transform' option can be a list of replace
369 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in `sed').
371 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
372 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
375 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
378 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
380 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
381 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
383 * Incremental archives
385 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
388 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
392 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
394 * New option --exclude-vcs
396 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
397 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
399 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
401 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
409 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
411 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
412 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
413 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
416 * Fix --version output.
418 * Recognition of broken archives.
420 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
421 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
422 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
423 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
425 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
427 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
430 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
432 * Licensed under the GPLv3
434 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
437 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
439 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
440 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
442 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
443 a full dump when both options were given.
445 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
446 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
448 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
450 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
451 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
452 option affects hard link targets as well.
454 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
455 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable `TAR_FD'.
458 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
460 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
461 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
464 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
465 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
466 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
467 still added to the archive.
469 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
470 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
471 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
472 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
473 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
474 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
475 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
477 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
478 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
479 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
482 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
484 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
485 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
486 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
488 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
489 members during creation.
492 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
493 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
494 the listing to stderr.
497 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
499 * Incompatible changes
503 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
504 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
508 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
509 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
510 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
511 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
512 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
515 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
516 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
517 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
519 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
520 following command line options:
522 --wildcards use wildcards
523 --anchored patterns match file name start
524 --ignore-case ignore case
525 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match `/'
527 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
528 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
530 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
531 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
532 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
534 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
535 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
537 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
538 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
539 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
540 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
542 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
544 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
545 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
549 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
550 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
551 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
553 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
555 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
557 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
558 versions it worked only with --extract.
560 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
561 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
562 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
563 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
564 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
565 for example, while comparing `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
567 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
568 as well as that about directories.
570 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
571 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
572 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
575 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
576 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
577 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
578 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
579 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
582 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
585 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
589 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
590 The file specified with -T may include any valid `tar' options,
591 including another -T option.
592 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
593 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
594 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
595 dash, use the --add-file option.
597 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
598 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
600 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
601 This is useful for processing output from `find dir -print0'.
602 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
604 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
605 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
606 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
609 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
610 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
612 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
613 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
614 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
615 `tar cv' and `tar tv' outputs.
617 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
620 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
621 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
624 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
625 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
626 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
627 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
628 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
630 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
631 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
633 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
634 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
635 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
636 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
637 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
638 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
639 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
641 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
642 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
643 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
644 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
646 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
647 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
648 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
649 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
651 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
652 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
653 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
657 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
658 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
659 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
660 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
661 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
662 was not processed correctly.
663 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
665 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
666 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
668 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
669 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
670 (for ustar and v7 formats).
671 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
672 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
673 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
674 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
678 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
680 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
681 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
684 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
686 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
687 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
688 now run `tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
690 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
691 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
694 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
695 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
696 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
697 back up. This change fixes the bug.
699 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
702 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
705 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
706 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
708 * `tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
709 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
711 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
712 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
713 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
715 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
717 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
718 the `rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
719 introduced in version 1.14
721 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
722 where to install `rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
723 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
724 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
725 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
728 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
729 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
730 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
731 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
732 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
733 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
734 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
735 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
736 extracted copy in such cases.
737 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
738 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
739 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
740 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
741 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
742 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
743 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
746 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
748 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
749 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
750 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
751 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
752 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
753 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
754 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
756 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
757 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
758 the previous default behavior.
760 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
761 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
762 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
763 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
766 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
767 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
768 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
769 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
770 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
772 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
773 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
774 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
775 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
776 file. N defaults to 1, so `tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
777 extracts the first occurrence of `filename' from `archive'
778 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
780 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
781 keywords in `pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to `pax'
784 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
785 individual files, as well as on directories.
787 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
788 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
789 option is given to configure.
791 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
792 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
793 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
794 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
795 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
796 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
797 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
798 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
799 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
801 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
802 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
805 * Removed obsolete command line options:
806 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
807 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
808 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
809 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
810 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
811 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
812 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
814 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
815 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
816 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
817 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
822 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
827 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
829 * New option --overwrite-dir.
830 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
831 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
834 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
836 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
839 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
844 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
846 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
849 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
851 * Some bugs were fixed:
853 - hard links to symbolic links
855 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
857 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
858 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
859 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
860 exclude patterns are interpreted.
862 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
863 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
864 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
865 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
866 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
867 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
868 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
869 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
871 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
872 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
873 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
876 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
878 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
879 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
881 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
882 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
885 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
887 * Some security problems have been fixed. `tar -x' now modifies only
888 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
889 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
891 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
892 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
894 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
896 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
898 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
900 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
902 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
903 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
905 * New language supported: da.
907 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
908 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
910 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
911 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
913 * `tar --delete -f -' now works again.
916 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
918 * `tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
919 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
922 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
924 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
925 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
926 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
927 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
928 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
929 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
930 longstanding security problems.
932 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
934 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
935 option of `open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
936 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
937 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
938 extracting a new directory.
940 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of `..'
941 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
942 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
944 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
945 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
947 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
948 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
949 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
950 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
951 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
952 names have multibyte chars.
954 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
955 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
956 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
957 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
958 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
959 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
960 are also escaped as needed.
962 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
963 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
966 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
968 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
969 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
972 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
974 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
975 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
976 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
979 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
981 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
982 * `tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
983 * If you specify an invalid date, `tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
984 * `configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
987 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
989 * `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
991 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
993 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
995 * `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
996 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
997 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
998 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
999 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1000 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1001 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1002 and which rejects large files.
1004 * On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1005 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1006 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1007 time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.
1009 * `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1010 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1011 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1013 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1015 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1018 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1020 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1021 for compatibility with paxutils.
1023 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1024 if no explicit operands were given.
1026 * The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1027 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1028 even if they begin with `-'.
1030 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1031 abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1032 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1033 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1034 numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1035 `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1038 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1040 * `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1041 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1042 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1045 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1047 * `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1048 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.
1050 * `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1053 * `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1054 numeric header field.
1057 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1059 * For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
1060 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1061 the original file or directory.
1064 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1066 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1068 * When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
1069 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1071 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1074 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1076 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1077 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1078 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1080 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1081 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1082 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1083 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1084 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1085 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1087 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1088 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1089 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1090 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1092 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1093 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1094 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1096 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1098 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1101 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1103 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1106 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1108 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1109 this matches historical practice.
1112 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1114 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1115 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1116 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1119 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1121 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1124 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1128 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1130 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1131 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1132 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1133 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1134 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1135 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1136 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1137 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1138 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1139 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1140 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1142 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1145 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1146 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1149 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1150 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1151 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1152 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1155 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1156 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1157 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1158 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1159 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
1160 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1163 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1164 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1165 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1166 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1167 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1168 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1169 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1170 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1171 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1174 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1175 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1176 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1177 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1178 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1179 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1180 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1181 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1183 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1185 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1187 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1188 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1189 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1190 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1191 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1193 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1195 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1197 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1198 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1199 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1202 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1204 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1206 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1207 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1208 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1209 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1211 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1213 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1215 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1218 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1220 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1222 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1224 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1228 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1229 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1230 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1231 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1232 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1236 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1238 * Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support
1239 for it will eventually be removed.
1241 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1242 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1244 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1245 after they are added to the archive.
1247 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1250 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1251 is being read or written.
1253 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1254 omitted from the archive.
1256 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1257 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1259 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1260 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1262 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1263 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1264 around to the beginning.
1266 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1267 `:' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1268 then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.
1270 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1271 their original values after dumping the file.
1273 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1276 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1277 modification and access times.
1279 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1280 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1281 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1284 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1286 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1287 +newer-mtime work right.
1289 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1291 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1293 * +volume is now called +label.
1295 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1296 what +exclude used to do.
1298 * Exit status is now correct.
1300 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1302 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1304 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1305 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1306 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1308 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1309 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1310 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1311 all our backups at the FSF.
1313 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1314 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1315 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1317 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1321 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1322 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1324 This file is part of GNU tar.
1326 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1327 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1328 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1331 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1332 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1333 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1334 GNU General Public License for more details.
1336 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1337 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1338 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1339 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1343 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1344 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1345 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1346 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1347 time-stamp-end: "\n"