Major changes in version 2.4: * new texinfo documentation * --sparse option to write sparse files * --only-verify-crc option to verify a CRC format archive * --no-absolute-paths option to ignore absolute paths * --quiet option to supress printing number of blocks copied * handle disk input errors more gracefully Major changes in version 2.3: * in newc and crc format archives, only store 1 copy of multiply linked files * handle multiply linked devices properly * handle multiply linked files with cpio -pl even when the source and destination are on different file systems * support HPUX Context Dependent Files * read and write HPUX cpio archives * read System V.4 POSIX tar archives and HPUX POSIX tar archives * use rmdir, instead of unlink, to delete existing directories Major changes in version 2.2: * handle link counts correctly when reading binary cpio archives * configure checks for some libraries that SVR4 needs Major changes in version 2.1: * cpio can access remote non-device files as well as remote devices * fix bugs in the MS-DOS port * add --swap equivalent to -b option Version 2.0 adds the following features: Support for the SVR4 cpio formats, which can store inodes >65535, and for traditional and POSIX tar archives. Also adds these options: -A --append append to instead of replacing the archive -V --dot print a dot for each file processed -H --format select archive format -C --io-size select I/O block size in bytes -M --message print a message at end of media volumes --no-preserve-owner don't change files' owners when extracting -R --owner set files' owners when extracting -E --pattern-file list of shell filename patterns to process -s --swap-bytes handle byte-order differences when extracting files -S --swap-halfwords ditto -b like -sS -I input archive filename -k recognize corrupted archives (we alawys do it, though) -O output archive filename Some options of previous versions have been renamed in 2.0: --binary was replaced by --format=bin --portability was replaced by --format=odc Some options have changed meaning in 2.0, for SVR4 compatibility: -O used to select the binary archive format, now selects the output file -V used to print the version number, now prints a dot for each file Version 2.0 also fixes several bugs in the handling of files with multiple links and of multi-volume archives on floppy disks.