Re: [Bug-tar] --listed-incremental + --no-recursion + --files-from bug

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Wolfgang Denk <address@hidden> wrote:

> > Yes, that's the way --listed-incremental works now. It processes entire
> > directory no matter what other options say.
> 
> What does "now" in this context mean?

It means "in this moment of time", "in its current state";

> Is there any intention  to  fix --listed-incremental?

Yes, the work is underway.

> So what exactly are the plans for fixing --listed-incremental  ?  Are
> there  any?

Historically, the intention of incremental mode (both -G and -g) was to
produce a dump of the entire filesystem, so that its contents can later
be restored exactly. This means, among other things, that when restoring
from incremental dumps all files present in the filesystem, but not in
the archive, are deleted. This behavior creates difficulties when
operating with, e.g. --files-from option. In fact, the provisions for
archiving individual files (as opposed to entire directories) with
--listed-incremental appeared only in version 1.14.

So, returning to the plans. The new incremental mode should, first of all,
store more inode metadata in the archive. Among other things this
will fix testcase "listed02.at", a problem often reported to the list. 
Further, it should keep exact information of the files being excluded
from archivation, either by --exclude option or because they were not
present in --file-from file, which will help implement these options in
a consistent way.

> [You will probably remember that there are other serious
> problems for example when using --listed-incremental  in  combination
> with  --one-file-system

This have been fixed in version 1.15. See NEWS:53 

> or  when  passing relative vs. absolute path names, etc.]

Unfortunately, it is not only listed-incremental problem. Removing
absolute file name prefixes affects verify mode as well. I did not
find any feasible solution for this yet.

Regards,
Sergey