[Bug-tar] Cannot explain this gnutar behaviour please observe.

[Robert Nicholson]

With

p355-1222bkksp1:/usr/local/bruconfig robert$ gnutar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.14
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
You may redistribute it under the terms of the GNU General Public  
License;
see the file named COPYING for details.
Written by John Gilmore and Jay Fenlason.
Modified to support extended attributes.

So I'm trying to do an incremental backup using -X and -N options.

From what I can tell whenever I actually have an entry in my  
excludes file the backup is a full backup instead of incremental  
please observe.

p355-1222bkksp1:/usr/local/bruconfig robert$ ls -al /var/backup/BACKUP-0
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  190 Mar  3 22:09 /var/backup/BACKUP-0

the intention here is to do an incremental backup since the full backup.

so I kick off the following command with the following exclude entries

core
\.Spotlight-V100

gnutar is using the following command

usr/bin/gnutar --create --file /Volumes/External/BRUBackups/annie/ 
backup-20060310-3.tar --show-omitted-dirs --verify --verbose -- 
preserve --exclude-from=/usr/local/bruconfig/gnuxpat2 --newer=/var/ 
backup/BACKUP-0 /

now when I look what it's actually backing up. this is a full _not_  
incremental backup.

p355-1222bkksp1:~ robert$ tar xvf /Volumes/External/BRUBackups/annie/ 
backup-20060310-3.tar
./
._.DS_Store
.DS_Store
._.hidden
._.hotfiles.btree
._.RegisterApplications.ted.tbu
._.TemporaryItems
.TemporaryItems/
.TemporaryItems/folders.0/
.TemporaryItems/folders.0/TemporaryItems/
._.Trashes
.Trashes/
.Trashes/._501
.Trashes/501/
.vol/
.vol/234881026/
.vol/234881040/
.vol/234881030/
Applications/
Applications/._.DS_Store
Applications/.DS_Store
Applications/Acqlite.app/
....
....
....

now if I remove all entries from the xpat file

and do it again

./
._.DS_Store
.DS_Store
._.hidden
._.hotfiles.btree
._.RegisterApplications.ted.tbu
._.Spotlight-V100
.Spotlight-V100/
.Spotlight-V100/.journalHistoryLog
.Spotlight-V100/.store.db

it never puts Applications in the tar which is the correct behaviour.  
ie. an incremental backup.