Sergey Poznyakoff wrote: >> All of this to say that I hope there is some way to make >> tar work the way it used to with those options, > > Up to version 1.22 tar would exit with a non-zero error code in such > cases. Do you propose to restore this behavior too? In my opinion, > it is inconsistent, because there were no real errors, so there should > be no reason for a non-zero exit code either. Besides, that would make > it hard to discern from real error cases. > >> yet without >> having to impose the -v option on all uses, which would likely >> break some users of tar. > > Actually, tar don't impose the -v option, since merely using > --warning=existing-file turns the warning on without having other > effects.
Hi Sergey, Thanks for adding --warning=existing-file. With that, tar can do most (maybe all) of what I want. Since with the vast majority of my manual uses of tar, I do not intend to update an existing directory, having an option to make it exit in that unusual/surprising case might be useful, but the diagnostics from --warning=existing-file are probably enough. > On the other hand, -v turns on the otherwise suppressed warnings (not > only this particular one), because it is coherent with its main > function, which is to increase verbosity. What I meant is that if I would have to use -v to get the warning messages I'd like, that would not work for me, because -v changes tar's behavior in many other cases. But now that you've added --warning=existing-file, it's not an issue. Thanks again, Jim
