tar/NEWS

GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes.
Copyright 1994, 1995-1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.

* `tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.

* New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.

* --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.

* `tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
  values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
  format.  This affects archive members with negative or huge time
  stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger.  The new tar
  archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
  GNU tar.  Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
  behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
  and which rejects large files.

* On 32-bit hosts, `tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
  the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
  2**32).  This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
  time_t hosts, so `tar' issues a warning.

* `tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
  that an archive contains garbage at the end.  It attempts to extract
  as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.

* A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.

* Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.


version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.

* The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
  for compatibility with paxutils.

* -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
  if no explicit operands were given.

* The `--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
  it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
  even if they begin with `-'.

* For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
  abbreviations like `EST' has been updated to match current practice.
  Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
  not in tar's hardwired table.  Remember, though, that you should use
  numeric UTC offsets like `-0500' instead of abbreviations like
  `EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.


version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.

* `tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
  out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format.  [This
  change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]


version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.

* `tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
  POSIX.1 requires this, and some other `tar' implementations check for it.

* `tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
  as a zero block.

* `tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
  numeric header field.


version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.

* For compatibility with traditional `tar', intermediate directories
  created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
  the original file or directory.


version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.

* --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.

* When creating an archive, leading `./' is no longer stripped,
  to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).

* --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.


version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.

* An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
  initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
  exclude a file if it matches any file name component.

* The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
  Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
  The symbolic format (e.g. "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC" is for portability
  when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
  The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
  for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.

* When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
  for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
  This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
  larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.

* When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
  uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
  and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".

* tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.

* New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.


version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.

* Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.


version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.

* Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
  this matches historical practice.


version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.

* A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
  excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
  Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.


version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.

* Bug reporting address changed to <[email protected]>.


version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.

* Bug fixes only.

version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.

* Support for large files, e.g. files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
  Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
* Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
* This release is only for fixes.  A more ambitious test release,
  with new features, is available as part of the paxutils.  Please see:
    http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/paxutils/
  The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
  at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
* An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
  but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
  Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.

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 internationalization 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 normalization 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.
* Recognize 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.