GNU tar 1.11.8
Release Notes

Note:
Some of the links in this file point to online documents which require additional installation.

Table of Contents

What is GNU tar ?

The GNU version of the tar (tape archive) UNIX utility. tar allows you to create tape or file archives (a file containing a collection of other files, optionally compressed), much like the Well known PC zip utility.

The most notable enhancements of GNU tar over other tar's are:

• Supports file compression in the archive. Use 'z' for gzip/gunzip or 'Z' for compress/uncompress compression schemes.
• Supports many file formats including the traditional tar, cpio, and other extensions.
• Has no limitation on filename lenght
• Has internationalization (I18N) support

As distributed, GNU tar doesn't come with a man page. We added one for your convenience (Courtesy of the amazing LDP)

See the man page for further details.

Author's Notice(s):

GNU tar is distributed under the FSF (Free Software Foundation) GPL (GNU Public License) also known as the GNU Copyleft.

Tar was written and enhanced over the years by scores of people on the net. The current maintainer is Francois Pinnard

Builder Notice(s):

Built and packaged for SGI by Ariel Faigon who is afraid emails for support would have to be silently ignored. Patches and constructive suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Installation Information

GNU tar subsystems

fw_GNUtar.sw.*

Execution only environment. The GNU tar executable.

fw_GNUtar.man.*

Man page & release notes.

fw_GNUtar.src.*

The full source distribution.

Installation Method

All of the subsystems for this product can be installed using IRIX. You do not need to use the miniroot. Refer to the Software Installation Administrator's Guide for complete installation instructions.

Compatibility

This software is compatible with IRIX 5.3 and IRIX 6.x.

GNU tar options are not compatible with the standard SGI tar. Although GNU tar covers all the functionality of the standard tar and much more.
For example, the option to compare an archive with an on-disk copy is -C (Compare) in standard tar and -d (diff) in GNU tar.