tar/README

This GNU tar 1.10.  Please send bug reports, etc., to
bug-gnu-utils@prep.ai.mit.edu.  

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.

To compile tar (and rmt, if your system has the needed features) on
Unix-like systems:

1.  Type `./configure'.  This shell script attempts to guess correct
values for various system-dependent variables used during compilation,
and creates the file `Makefile'.  This takes a couple of minutes.

If you want to compile in a different directory from the one
containing the source code, `cd' to that directory and run `configure'
with the option `+srcdir=DIR', where DIR is the directory that
contains the source code.  The object files and executables will be
put in the current directory.  This option only works with versions of
`make' that support the VPATH variable.  `configure' ignores any other
arguments you give it.

If your system requires unusual options for compilation or linking
that `configure' doesn't know about, you can give `configure' initial
values for variables by setting them in the environment; in
Bourne-compatible shells, you can do that on the command line like
this:
$ CC='gcc -traditional' LIBS=-lposix ./configure

2.  If you want to change the directories where the programs will be
installed, or the optimization options, edit `Makefile' and change
those values.  If you have an unusual system that needs special
compilation options that `configure' doesn't know about, and you
didn't pass them in the environment when running `configure', you
should add them to `Makefile' now.  Alternately, teach `configure' how
to figure out that it is being run on a system where they are needed,
and mail the diffs to the address listed at the top of this file so we
can include them in the next release.

3.  Type `make'.

4.  If your system needs to link with -lPW to get alloca, but has
rename in the C library (so WANT_RENAME is not used), -lPW might give
you an incorrect version of rename.  On HP-UX this manifests itself as
an undefined data symbol called "Error" when linking tar.  If this
happens, use `ar x' to extract alloca.o from libPW.a and `ar rc' to
put it in a library liballoca.a, and put that in LIBS instead of -lPW.
This problem does not occur when using gcc, which has alloca built in.

5.  If the programs compile successfully, type `make install' to
install them.

6.  After you have installed the programs, you can remove the binaries
from the source directory by typing `make clean'.  Type `make
distclean' if you also want to remove `Makefile', for instance if you
are going to recompile tar next on another type of machine.

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.


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.