[Bug 522856] Re: -h option does not do what is expected

[Hegh]

I have not seen this behavior from tar anywhere (but I have never tried
it with a different version, either). I was basing my bug report on the
man page for tar. I only noticed the "follow symlinks" from the phrase
"follow symlinks; archive and dump the files they point to" in the man
page.

I am now on Kubuntu 10.04, which is still supported, and this is still
the behavior that I see, but this may be an enhancement instead of a bug
report.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/522856

Title:
  -h option does not do what is expected

Status in “tar” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: tar

  Executing tar -hxf <file.tar> should follow existing symlinks and
  write files to those destination paths. Instead, the behavior of tar
  -hxf <file.tar> and tar -xf <file.tar> is exactly the same -- it
  overwrites the symlink with the file.

  Example:
  $ echo "Testing" >testfile
  $ tar -cf test.tar testfile
  $ rm testfile
  $ ln -s testfile2 testfile

  This command should overwrite the symlink "testfile":
  $ tar -xf test.tar

  This command should create a new file named "testfile2", leaving the symlink "testfile" pointing at "testfile2":
  $ tar -hxf test.tar

  Instead, the latter command performs exactly as the former command
  does.

  ProblemType: Bug
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Tue Feb 16 16:04:13 2010
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
  Package: tar 1.22-1
  ProcEnviron:
   SHELL=/bin/bash
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   LANGUAGE=
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-19.56-server
  SourcePackage: tar
  Uname: Linux 2.6.31-19-server x86_64

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