Re: gnu tar w/ --listed-incremental --files-from

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,
        thank you for your bug report.

On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 10:44:41AM +0100, Miek Gieben wrote:
> simular to this: tar --files-from FILELIST --listed-incremental INCLIST.
> 
> Now if I list directories in FILELIST, incremental backups work, but if I
> list specific files in FILELIST, they are always stored in the archive.
> 
> Is this a bug?

last time I saw the source code, I noticed that tar will probably behave
this way.  But the source seemed quite confusing to me and I thought
noone will actually encounter the bug.

You did.  :-)

OK, I'd say this _is_ a bug.

But I'm not brave enough to fix it.  I don't know whether the tar
maintainer has enough energy to work on it.

There is a workaround, though:
create a temporary directory, put there hard links to the files you want
incrementally backup, and put the name of that directory to the filelist.

This way it should work.

In case you decide to fix the bug yourself, be sure to start with the
newest version available:

 - get tar-1.13.25

 - get my patch which tried to solve a related issue:
    http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-utils/2003-01/msg00019.html
   the bug report which made me to write that patch is available from:
    http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-utils/2002-12/msg00248.html

Of course, I don't know whether the maintainer will accept my patch, so
I cannot tell you whether you should use it if you decide to produce a patch.

Hope this helps,
        Stepan Kasal