NEWS

Free paxutils NEWS - User visible changes.	-*- outline -*- (allout)
Copyright © 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

* Version 2.4i - François Pinard, 1999-06.

.* Specification changes
. + An info script should return success for `tar' to continue processing.

.* New features
. + Short `man' pages get installed as well for `cpio', `mt' and `pax'.
. + Option --quick (q) may stop reading the archive early in some cases.
. + Experimental --per-file-compress (y) option may produce safer archives.
. + Using --list (t) with --null produces NUL-terminated, unquoted lines.
. + Options --file-from (T) and --directory (C) may now be used together.
. + Handles buggy Solaris archives having exactly 100 characters in names.

* Version (cpio) 2.4.50 - Tom Tromey, 1998-05.

.* Internationalized.
.* Started pax front end.
.* Test suite now in distribution.

* Version (tar) 1.12b - François Pinard, 1998-02.

.* New features
. + Option --name-prefix for all members of created archive.
. + Experimental --no-attributes option at extraction time.
. + MSDOS port and support, thanks to Eli Zaretskii.
. + A short `man' page gets installed.  `contrib/' holds a better one.

.* Removed features
. + Names --gunzip, --ungzip and --uncompress are obsolete as options.

.* Improvements
. + Reading POSIX `tar' archives, correctly interpret longish file names.
. + Option --owner accepts the USER.GROUP notation.
. + Option --checkpoint writes dots instead of long messages.
. + Various cleanups, speedups, and bug corrections, as usual.

* Version (tar) 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 + Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.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 (cpio) 2.4.2 - John Oleynick, 1996-01.

* Version (cpio) 2.3.91 - Tom Tromey, 1995-11.

.* Internationalized.

* Version (cpio) 2.4 - John Oleynick, 1995-06.

.* New texinfo documentation.
.* --sparse option to write sparse files.
.* --only-verify-crc option to verify a CRC format archive.
.* --no-absolute-paths option to ignore absolute paths.
.* --quiet option to supress printing number of blocks copied.
.* Handle disk input errors more gracefully.

* Version (cpio) 2.3 - John Oleynick, 1993-07.

.* in newc and crc format archives, only store 1 copy of multiply linked files.
.* handle multiply linked devices properly.
.* handle multiply linked files with cpio -pl even when the source and
  destination are on different file systems.
.* support HPUX Context Dependent Files.
.* read and write HPUX cpio archives.
.* read System V.4 POSIX tar archives and HPUX POSIX tar archives.
.* use rmdir, instead of unlink, to delete existing directories.

* Version (tar) 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 (tar) 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 (cpio) 2.2 - David J. MacKenzie, 1992-11.

.* handle link counts correctly when reading binary cpio archives.
.* configure checks for some libraries that SVR4 needs.

* Version (cpio) 2.1 - David J. MacKenzie, 1992-10.

.* cpio can access remote non-device files as well as remote devices.
.* fix bugs in the MS-DOS port.
.* add --swap equivalent to -b option.

* Version (tar) 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.

.* Many bug fixes.

* Version (tar) 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.

* Version (cpio) 2.0 - David J. MacKenzie, 1992-08.

.* Support for the SVR4 cpio formats, which can store inodes >65535, and
   for traditional and POSIX tar archives.  Also adds these options:

  -A --append		append to instead of replacing the archive
  -V --dot		print a dot for each file processed
  -H --format		select archive format
  -C --io-size		select I/O block size in bytes
  -M --message		print a message at end of media volumes
  --no-preserve-owner	don't change files' owners when extracting
  -R --owner		set files' owners when extracting
  -E --pattern-file	list of shell filename patterns to process
  -s --swap-bytes	handle byte-order differences when extracting files
  -S --swap-halfwords	ditto
  -b			like -sS
  -I			input archive filename
  -k			recognize corrupted archives (we alawys do it, though)
  -O			output archive filename

.* Some options of previous versions have been renamed:
  --binary was replaced by --format=bin
  --portability was replaced by --format=odc

.* Some options have changed meaning, for SVR4 compatibility:
  -O used to select the binary archive format, now selects the output file
  -V used to print the version number, now prints a dot for each file

.* Fixes several bugs in the handling of files with
  multiple links and of multi-volume archives on floppy disks.

* Version (tar) 1.10.16 - 1992-07.

* Version (tar) 1.10.15 - 1992-06.

* Version (tar) 1.10.14 - 1992-05.

* Version (tar) 1.10.13 - 1992-01.

.* Many bug fixes.

.* Use a `configure' file as 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 (tar) 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 (cpio) 1.2 - David J. MacKenzie, 1991-05.

* Version (tar) 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.

* Version (tar) 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.

* Version (cpio) 1.1 - Phil Nelson, date unknown.

* Version (cpio) 1.0 - Phil Nelson, 1988-09.

* Versions (tar) 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.

.* See ChangeLog for more details.