Re: [Bug-tar] --files-from and recursive extract (behavior change in 1.27)

[Jan Engelhardt]

On Friday 2015-06-19 14:29, Pavel Raiskup wrote:
>> 
>> >> The patch fix the first issue I reported, but not the second.
>> 
>> This patch, which was recently backported to openSUSE's tar-1.28[1]
>> 
>> [1] 
>> https://build.opensuse.org/package/view_file/Base:System/tar/tar-recursive--files-from.patch?expand=1
>> 
>> breaks creation of tar archives when --no-recursive appears after -T:
>>   https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=918487
>
>I'm not sure whether this was discussed off-list somehow, but I would call
>the *new* behavior as expected.  There is inconsistency in behavior - yes,
>but does not seem to be regression, rather a new feature..?

It feels very much like a regression, because the behavior changed
in such a way that it changed the outcome of scripts making use of
that option.

By default, people will assume that options are position-independent,
that specifying no-argument options multiple times is idempotent
unless otherwise specified, and that specifying with-argument options
have a last-win strategy unless otherwise specified.

TTBOMK, only --verbose is spelled out to change behavior if present
multiple times, but there is no word on multiple-presence of
position-dependence of --(no-)recursion in tar.info.