Re: [Bug-tar] bug or feature?

[Joerg Schilling]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:

> On 12/14/2017 12:03 PM, Bruce Dubbs wrote:
> > Is there any reason that tar should change the permissions or 
> > ownership of the . directory if it is present in a tarball?
>
> Yes, as that's what tar has done "forever" and quite possibly some 
> people depend on it. It might be a good idea to omit extraction of "." 
> unless some new option is specified.

While the UNIX tar did this since ~ 1977, star does something different since 
before GNU tar even exists:

star extracts only files if they are younger in the archive than on disk.

This is what cpio decided to to and this is safe in most cases.


If you like to extract "." unconditionally there is a special star option
"-xdot".

Jörg

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