Some people argue that GNU tar should not hesitate to overwrite
files with other files when extracting. When extracting a tar
archive, they expect to see a faithful copy of the state of the filesystem
when the archive was created. It is debatable that this would always
be a proper behaviour. For example, suppose one has an archive in
which `usr/local' is a link to `usr/local2'. Since then,
maybe the site removed the link and renamed the whole hierarchy from
`/usr/local2' to `/usr/local'. Such things happen all the time.
I guess it would not be welcome at all that GNU tar removes the
whole hierarchy just to make room for the link to be reinstated (unless it
also simultaneously restores the full `/usr/local2', of course!
GNU tar is indeed able to remove a whole hierarchy to reestablish a
symbolic link, for example, but only if --recursive-unlink
is specified to allow this behaviour. In any case, single files are
silently removed.
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