Bug (and fix) for --exclude-from

[Allan Nathanson]

Hi -

I've been wrestling with GNU tar's "--exclude-from" option and believe I 
have found a problem (or I've completely missed what functionality the 
option is supposed to provide).

Suppose that I have the following directory hierarchy that I would like to 
archive:

        x/a
        x/b/foo
        x/c
        x/d/foo
        x/e
        ...

I would like to archive everything all of the files/directories except for 
"x/b/foo".  In my initial attempts to use the "--exclude-from" option I 
specified a file containing "x/b/foo".  Based on the current code this 
wouldn't work since only the filename component is checked.  Changing the 
exclude file to include just "foo" kept "x/b/foo" out of the archive but 
also excluded "x/d/foo".  My belief is that the full path should also be 
compared against the exclude list.  This will facilitate exclusions based 
on the "all files/directories with a given name" *AND* "specific 
files/directories".

Here's a patch which compares the full path to the exclude list:

diff -u -d -b -w -r1.1.1.2 create.c
--- create.c    2000/05/06 23:28:33     1.1.1.2
+++ create.c    2001/11/01 21:45:29
@@ -1496,6 +1496,11 @@
 #endif
            }
          strcpy (namebuf + len, entry->d_name);
+
+         /* Skip excluded path names.  */
+         if (excluded_filename (excluded, namebuf))
+           continue;
+
          dump_file (namebuf, our_device, 0);
        }

Comments?

- Allan Nathanson
  Apple, Core OS