[Bug-tar] --listed-incremental and --no-recursion do not work together

[Bjoern Voigt]

I recently wondered why my backup files are so big. I use a Tar
backup script which uses Tar together with the options
--no-recursion, --listed-incremental and --files-from. Some files
where saved twice.

I found a nearly 10 years old bug report in this list about an
inconsistency between the Tar options --listed-incremental and
--no-recursion. Unfortunately the bug is still present in the latest
Tar version (1.28). Here is the original bug report:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2005-02/msg00057.html

I use Tar the same way like the original bug reporter.

To describe the bug, I found a minimal example, which should show
the problem too.

At first set up a directories and a file inside this directory and
make sure, that the listed-incremental file does not exist:

$ mkdir testdir1
$ touch testdir1/file1
$ rm -f incr.snar

Creating a tar archiv with only "testdir1" without recursion works:

$ tar --no-recursion -cvf test.tar testdir1
testdir1/

If I add the --listed-incremental option, the --no-recursion option
does not work anymore:

$ tar --no-recursion --listed-incremental=incr.snar -cvf test.tar
testdir1
tar: testdir1: Directory is new
tar: testdir1/subdir1: Directory is new
testdir1/
testdir1/file1
$ tar -tf test.tar
testdir1/
testdir1/file1

I hope, that the bug can be fixed. If not, an error or warning
message should be printed, if --listed-incremental and
--no-recursion are used together.

Greetings,
Björn