Volker Kuhlmann
Fact is GNU has no man page for tar.
I have been involved in that `tar' man page affair, so I can try my best to reply to questions. There are two main sources of documentation: the Texinfo manual, and the `--help' output. In the 1.12 series, if I remember well, there is an installed `man' page, which is automatically derived from the `--help' output through Brendan O'Dea `help2man' nice tool. This `man' page even explains how to get to the remainder of the documentation. However:
"tar --help" only gives you a summary not good enough for understanding.
Indeed, `--help' output for almost any program is meant as a reminder, and is no substitute for the real documentation. Of course, we all know the folklore by which people will resort to reading the real documentation only when everything else fails. Nevertheless, `--help' is sufficient for remembering, but surely not enough to learn. And so is the `tar' man page.
As Lenz pointed out, "info tar" will give you the basics.
In fact, it should give you not only the basics, but all available information. This is the full reference. Go to the `Invoking tar' or `tar invocation' node if you are in quick need and do not want to see the tutorial, concepts, and such more complete information. By the way, for every program accessible through `info PROGRAM', there should be an `Invoking PROGRAM' or `PROGRAM invocation' node. This is mandated by GNU standards. If you find a PROGRAM without such a node, you may report it as a bug.
SuSE decided not to ship out-of-date junk instead. Having bad unknowingly is worse than having nothing.
The small `tar' man page which comes with 1.12 _is_ up-to-date, as it carefully reflects `--help' output. Even if I tried reasonably hard for `info tar' (which only gives access to an on-line version of the printed manual) to give adequate information, it might still have a few mistakes, but it is generally good. If there was really no documentation at all, than my own feeling is that an out-dated `man' page would be better than nothing, indeed. But if there is a reasonably correct information in some format, distributing an out-dated `man' page would surely be a mistake, as it would bring confusion, and raise frustration. We should not place documentation format above documentation adequacy. I guess I could write entertaining and unbelievable chapters on the real history of `tar' documentation :-). -- François Pinard http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/