bsdtar '--exclude pattern' problems

[Lowell Gilbert]

Karol Kwiatkowski <freebsd at orchid.homeunix.org> writes:

> Hello all,
> 
> I upgraded 5.2.1 to 5.3 recently and I'm trying to run my cron scripts
> which use tar utility (which defaults to bsdtar(1) on 5.3) and I can't
> figure out how to use '--exclude pattern' with it. It seems I'm
> missing something obvious here or bsdtar(1) is happily ignoring
> --exclude option.
> 
> my system:
> FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE-p1 #4: Sat Nov 27 19:37:42 CET 2004
> 
> here's what I try to run:
> 
> orchid# /usr/bin/tar -czvf /home/root.backup/test.tar.gz -C /home . \
>  --exclude "root.backup/*" --exclude "pub/*" --exclude "ncvs/*"
> 
> I tried '-W exclude=pattern', too:
> 
> orchid# /usr/bin/tar -czvf /home/root.backup/test.tar.gz -C /home . \
>   -W exclude="root.backup/*" -W exclude="pub/*" -W exclude="ncvs/*"
> 
> Both commands include all directories under /home. However using
> /usr/bin/gtar works as expected.

According to the tar(1) manual, the file parameters are supposed to
come after all of the option parameters.  So instead of 

> orchid# /usr/bin/tar -czvf /home/root.backup/test.tar.gz -C /home . \
>  --exclude "root.backup/*" --exclude "pub/*" --exclude "ncvs/*"

I think you should have

> orchid# /usr/bin/tar -czvf /home/root.backup/test.tar.gz -C /home \
>  --exclude "root.backup/*" --exclude "pub/*" --exclude "ncvs/*" .

which seems to do what you're expecting.

I don't have access to a copy of the POSIX spec, but I seem to recall
that it generally expects the options first.  So that may be where the
behaviour originates.

Be well.
-- 
Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area
		http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/