On Wednesday 20 September 2006 11:05, Sergey Poznyakoff wrote:
>> > >tar: -l option changed meaning, without any warning!
>
>The change of its meaning was announced at least on 2004-05-11, with the
>release of 1.14.  Three releases are quite sufficient for the users to
>get used to the changes, aren't they?
>
Were these changes suitably relayed to the major users of tar, such as the 
amanda developers?  With the information hiway being 100 lanes wide these 
days, its sorta hard to spot the right little red coupe. :)

>> > I wasn't able to find the docs for 1.15-1 on their site, so I have
>
>Besides being shipped with the tarball, the docs are always available
>from http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual.  The planned change in the
>meaning of the -l option was announced there (along with the NEWS file)
>as early as on May 2004.

That didn't seem to want to pop up with a digg search while I was browseing 
your site, sorry.

>> > Question for the gnu folks: can you please tell us when this "-l"
>> > option was actually changed to be the hardlink checking function from
>> > the formerly used shorthand for the --one-file-system option?
>
>The excerpt below describes it in detail.  For even more details,
>you may wish to read the developers discussion at
>
>  http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-tar
>
>> tar-1.15.91/NEWS states:
>> | version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, (CVS version)
>> |
>> | * Incompatible changes
>> |
>> | ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which
>> | complies with UNIX98.  This ends the transition period started with
>> | version 1.14.
>
>Groetjes,
>Sergey

Thanks Sergey.  Now we know, and can take evasive action. :)

-- 
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