on  Wed, 20 Sep 2006 10:33:15 EDT
Gene Heskett <gene.heskett AT verizon DOT net> wrote:
>
> On Wednesday 20 September 2006 05:56, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> >On Mon, 11 Sep 2006, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> >>
> >> But be careful, at least the tar 1.15.91-2 from Debian is broken: it
> >> ignores the --one-file-system option when doing incrementals, causing
> >> exorbitant backup sizes for any level > 0. I don't know about the
> >> upstream version, but since this bug has been reported almost 2 months
> >> ago, I'm afraid that one is broken, too.
> >
> >Apparently the problem is more subtle. Thanks to the Debian bug tracking
> >system, I noticed this:
> >
> >http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=384508
> >tar: -l option changed meaning, without any warning!
> >
> >Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
> >
> >      Geert
> >
> Good Grief Charley Brown!
> 
> Tar is supposed to be a stable, mature utility is it not?  I mean its what, 
> 30 years old, existing in the various *nix's long before gnu took over?  
> Whyinhell can't the folks over at gnu.org find something else to screw 
> with besides tar?  It doesn't _need_ to be on their WPA or CCC lists as a 
> makework project when there's nothing else to do around the office.
> 

On my Suse 10.0 system:

(2): cs> tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.15.1
(0): cs> tar -l dum dum
tar: Semantics of -l option will change in the future releases.
tar: Please use --one-file-system option instead.

So, at least there were warnings (not really an excuse I think)

Regards,

Charles