tar -x without clobbering directories
Tom McLaughlin
tmclaugh-VThn6mlTRQFChFL4AGkBsw at public.gmane.org
Tue May 5 16:21:42 EDT 2009
Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote, On 05/05/2009 02:24 PM:
> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Michael ODonnell
> <michael.odonnell-Wuw85uim5zDR7s880joybQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>
>> My Debian system's tar identifies itself as "tar (GNU tar) 1.22" and
>> the output generated with --help includes the following excerpt where
>> that --no-overwrite-dir option sounds like what you wanted:
>>
>> Overwrite control:
>>
>> -k, --keep-old-files don't replace existing files when extracting
>> --keep-newer-files don't replace existing files that are newer than
>> their archive copies
>> --no-overwrite-dir preserve metadata of existing directories
>> --overwrite overwrite existing files when extracting
>> --overwrite-dir overwrite metadata of existing directories when
>> extracting (default)
>> --recursive-unlink empty hierarchies prior to extracting directory
>> --remove-files remove files after adding them to the archive
>> -U, --unlink-first remove each file prior to extracting over it
>> -W, --verify attempt to verify the archive after writing it
>>
>
>
> Thanks. There is a lot more option information in the --help output
> than in the man page.
>
> I wanted to overwrite all directories except "sites" which is why I
> was hoping --exclude=sites would work.
>
> I'll have to test --keep-newer-files to see if that works.
> http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/tar.html#SEC72
>
> p.s. I read the tar man page (more than once), and those options
> aren't listed. There is this BUG statement at the bottom:
>
> BUGS
> The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create info
> documents instead. Unfortunately, the info document describing tar is
> licensed under the GFDL with invariant cover texts, which violates the
> Debian Free Software Guidelines. As a result, the info
> documentation for tar is not included in the Debian package.
>
> If you want to read the complete documentation for GNU tar,
> please refer to the online version at
>
> <http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/index.html>
>
> This man page was created for the Debian distribution. It
> does not describe all of the functionality of tar, and it is often out
> of date. Patches to improve the coverage and/or accuracy of this man
> page are appreciated, and should be filed as wishlist severity bugs
> against the Debian tar package, not submitted to the GNU tar
> maintainers.
>
Just curios, are you saying that when extracting Drupal everything under
sites/ is wiped out? For example any files created by you and not in
the Drupal tarball are gone after extraction? That's the sense I got
from your email but could not reproduce on Fedora 10 with tar 1.20.
Also --overwrite-dir does not say it is the default behavior in the man
page I have.
tom
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