This is the README file for Archive::Tar, the Perl module for creation
and manipulation of tar files.

* Installation

Archive::Tar uses the standard perl module install process

perl Makefile.PL
make
make test (optional but recommended)
make install

This module uses no C-coded parts in itself, but it will try to use
the IO::Zlib module to read and write gzipped tarfiles.
Archive::Tar will still work without IO::Zlib, it will just complain 
when you try to use a compressed archive or write on, since it 
obviously can't. 

* important changes in version 0.99_03 28/4/2003:

This release only has bug fixes on 0.99_02.

Fixed handling of long file names when extracting with 
C<extract_archive>

Fixed handling of prefixes in tar headers that contain regex meta-
characters.

Fixed a few spurious warnings about comparing non-numbers.

Expanded the test cases accordingly.


* important changes in version 0.99_02 26/3/2003:

Added options to be passed to read, namely:
	- extract (to extract while reading)
	- limit (to limit the amount of files read from the archive)

Implemented the '././@LongLinke' support, which is GNU's way of
dealing with filenames that are longer than 255 chars.

Added a global variable $WARN which controls whether warnings get
printed or just stored.

Fixed a few small bugs that considered files named '0' or '' to not
really be files and refuse to package them.

* important changes in version 0.99_01 16/3/2003:

Total rewrite from the ground up. Removed as many as the nasty 
bits (no pun intended) as possible and tucked them away. 
No code from the old distribution remains.

Cleaned up the API, introduced clean error handling and just 
generally removed a lot of cruft.

Note that Archive::Tar now requires perl version 5.005_03 or higher 
to run.

Introduced 2 new submodules:
Archive::Tar::Constant
    Simply holds all constants, like block length, tar headers etc
    
Archive::Tar::File
    Object class for all files in a tar archive, to make for easier
    manipulataion of the archive in-memory.
    See perldoc Archive::Tar::File after installation.

Added a few features:
write() now takes an optional 3rd paramater (prefix) which will allow
you to tuck away all files in that sub directory.

rename() is introduced, allowing for easy renaming of files in the
archive.

get_files() returns a file of all Archive::Tar::File objects in the
current read-in archive.

* important changes in version 0.23, 21/1/2003:

Bundled 0.072 and 0.22 to be able to work on Win32 and non-Win32
platforms. Since the previous version is almost 3 years old, bundling
seemed like the quickest way to get a working solution again.

Archive::Tar now transparently Does The Right Thing depending what
platform you are on -- Win32 users, read the Archive::Tar::Win32
documentation!

I also suppose this makes me the new maintainer...

* important changes in version 0.20:

New class methods create_archive, extract_archive & list_archive.

Archive::Tar no longer keeps the entire archive in memory after
reading it.  This results in a major reduction in memory consumption.

Added suport for character & block special files.  These files are
currently created using mknod, so they will only be available on UNIX
platforms.

See the file ChangeLog for more complete details.

* important changes for version 0.08

Fixed (again) the MacOS support and included alpha support for
block/character special files as well as improving symlink handling.

NOTE: Archive::Tar is undergoing major work to extend the interface
and lower memory consumpton.  Any changes to the existing interface
should be extensions only.

* important changes for version 0.072.

Fixes a problem with systems that don't like open files being deleted.
It also has an explicit copyright notice so folks like Debian can
redistribute it in peace, and an new custodial maintainer due to
Calle's suffering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Get better soon, Calle!

* important changes for version 0.071

It fixes a bunch of bugs, implements POSIX-style long pathnames and
adds a couple of useful methods.  It has also been verified to work on
Win32.

This version also includes a small tar-lookalike program, ptar. There
is no documentation beyond a usage message, but if you've ever used at
Unix-style tar program it should be very familiar.

Unless something really strange and terrible shows up, this will be
the last alpha-test version, and the next release will be beta-test
and v0.50 or something like that.

If you use this module at all, please mail Calle
<calle@lysator.liu.se> or Stephen <gibreel@pobox.com> and tell us what
you think of it.

Calle Dybedahl,
33 Aftermath, 3163 (mundanely known as 21 November 1997)

Gurusamy "stand-in maintainer" Sarathy,
-697 Millennium, 2 (mundanely known as  1 February 1998)

Stephen Zander (new custodial maintainer)
Day 9, Year 90 of Our Ford (mundanely known as 9 January 1999)

Jos Boumans (bundler),
1043188048 (mundanely known as 21st of January 2003)
