Hello Alexander, Current git master implements the functionality proposed by your posting on 2009-03-29. It is partially based on your patch.
The new behavior is as follows: If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file was explicitly listed in the command line, or was gathered during the file system scan. If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar issues error message and exits with the code 2, which means fatal error. Otherwise, if the file was gathered during the file system scan, tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it", and sets the exit code to 1, which means "some files differ". Additionally, if the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning is issued and exit code remains 0. Would you please test it and inform me if it needs any further improvements? Thank you. -- Sergey
