tar/README

Hey!  Emacs!  Yo!  This is -*- Text -*- !!!

This GNU tar 1.11.  Please send bug reports, etc., to
bug-gnu-utils@prep.ai.mit.edu.  This is a beta-test release.  Please
try it out.  After bug reports are processed for this release, version
1.12 will be released.

GNU tar is based heavily on John Gilmore's public domain tar, but with
added features.  The manual is currently being written.  An old
manual, surely riddled with errors, is in tar.texinfo.  Please don't
send in bug reports about that manual.  In particular, the mechanism
for doing incremental dumps has been significantly changed.

This distribution also includes rmt, the remote tape server (which
must reside in /etc).  The mt program is in the GNU cpio distribution.

See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions for Unix.

makefile.pc is a makefile for Turbo C 2.0 on MS-DOS.

Various people have been having problems using floppies on a NeXT.
I've gotten conflicting reports about what should be done to solve the
problems, and we have no way to test it ourselves.

If you want to do incremental dumps, use the distributed backup
scripts.  They are what we use at the FSF to do all our backups.  Most
importantly, do not use +incremental (-G) or +after-date (-N) or
+newer-mtime to do incremental dumps.  The only option that works
correctly for this purpose is +listed-incremental.  (When extracting
incremental dumps, use +incremental (-G).)

There is no tar manual in this release.  The old manual has too many
problems to make it usable.  A new manual will appear in version 1.12.

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.