tar/NEWS

Current Version: 1.11.2


User-visible changes since 1.11.1:

o Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
o Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
o New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
  of compress.  Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
  compress program.  --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
  now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
o Several error messages are cleaned up.
o Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
o Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option 
  for --info-script.
o Behave better with broken rmt servers.
o Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
o Several Makefile cleanups.

Version 1.11.1
User-visible changes since 1.11:

o Many bug fixes

================
Version 1.11
User-visible changes since 1.10:

o Many bug fixes

o Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.

o Long options now use `--'; use of `+' is deprecated and support for it
  will eventually be removed.

o New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be null-terminated,
  and causes -C to be ignored.

o New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories) after
  they are added to the archive.

o New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
  the exit status.

o New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape is
  being read or written.

o New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
  omitted from the archive.

o Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
  end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.

o --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user (but
  not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.

o When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
  the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
  around to the beginning.

o Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
  `:' is interpreted as remote.  If new option --force-local is given,
  then even archive files with a `:' are considered local.

o New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to their
  original values after dumping the file.

o No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it what
  to dump.

o When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
  modification and access times.

o Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
  precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
  longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
  long names to work.


==================
Version 1.10:
User-visible changes since 1.09:

Filename to -G is optional.  -C works right.  
Names +newer and +newer-mtime work right.

-g is now +incremental
-G is now +listed-incremental

Sparse files now work correctly.

+volume is now called +label.

+exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does what
+exclude used to do.

Exit status is now correct.

+totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.

When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.

New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD dump:
you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that point
instead of waiting for a write error.

New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful to
people.  They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and shouldn't
need local modification.  These are what we use to do all our backups
at the FSF.