[Bug-tar] Tar symlinks questions

[yamu wasp]

In the tar build script of slackware-10.2 on down to
slackware-8.1 it says they still use tar-1.13 because:

"...
# This old version is the only one that won't clobber
synlinks, e.g.:
# someone moves /opt to /usr/opt and makes a symlink. 
With newer
# versions of tar, installing any new package will
remove the /opt
# symlink and plop down a new directory there.
# Well, there's a lot of other bugs (the remote stuff
particularly I'm
# told is flaky) in tar-1.13, so it'll only be here
now for use by the
# Slackware package utils.  And, we'll even let people
remove it and
# the pkgutils will still try to work (but eventually
they'll pay the
# price :)
..."

ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-10.2/source/a/tar/tar.SlackBuild


I think it was referring to the "tar-1.13.25
overwrites symlinks to directories when extracting"
bug (I don't know any of the others):

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-utils/2002-04/msg00158.html


But I looked at the changelogs page (on the GNU Tar
Project site), and didn't see anything about the bug.

QUESTIONS:
1) Are the symlinks and/or other bugs fixed?

2) Also, is there a way to use tar to only overwrite
symlinks with other symlinks (not directories)?

(If not, that's a feature I would want in the next
version of GNU Tar.)



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com