tar/NEWS

GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes.
Copyright © 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.

Sensitive matters
* Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
* Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.

Output for humans
* Offer internationalisation capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
* Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
* Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
* More normalisation and cleanup in error messages.

Creation
* For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
* Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
* New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
* Recognise creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
* Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in `tar cf FILE').
* Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.

Extraction
* Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
* Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
* Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
* Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
* Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
* Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
* When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
* Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
* New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.

Various changes
* Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
* Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
* Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
* Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
* With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
* Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
* Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
* Rename option --modification-time to --touch.

Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.

Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.

* Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
* The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
* The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
* Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
* Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.

Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.

Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.

* Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT.

* Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.

* Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.

* 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.

* Several error messages are cleaned up.

* Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.

* Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
for --info-script.

* Behave better with broken rmt servers.

* Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.

* Several Makefile cleanups.

Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.

* Many bug fixes.

Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.

* Many bug fixes.

* Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* 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.

* 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.

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

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

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

* 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 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.

* 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.

Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.

* See ChangeLog for more details.