xtrabackup behaviour is inconsistent when called directly instead of via the innnobackupex symbolic link

[Dave]

Using percona-xtrabackup 2.3.2-1.trusty (from the percona repositories):

/usr/bin/innobackupex is a symbolic link to xtrabackup

The command:
/usr/bin/innobackupex --user=root --socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock --compress --stream=xbstream /tmp > /dev/null

Performs a backup and streams it to /dev/null

The command:
/usr/bin/xtrabackup --user=root --socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock --compress --stream=xbstream /tmp > /dev/null

Responds:
xtrabackup: Error: unknown argument: '/tmp'

Renaming the xtrabackup binary to innobackupex and running with the same command line causes a backup to be performed and streamed to /dev/null

In the documentation ( https://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/2.3/innobackupex/streaming_backups_innobackupex.html ) it is indicated that the correct form for streaming backups is:
innobackupex --stream=tar /tmp

Also in the documentation ( https://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/2.3/manual.html ) indicated innobackupex is deprecated but that xtrabackup supports all the features/ syntax

[Sergei Glushchenko (sergei.glushchenko)]

xtrabackup does support all the features, but the syntax remains the same as it used to be

correct syntax for xtrabackup is:

xtrabackup --user=root --socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock --compress --stream=xbstream --backup target-dir=/tmp

We are working to update documentation

[Dave (b-dave-w)]

I've also been unable to find the xtrabackup syntactical equivalent to:

innobackupex --decompress /data/backup/2013-08-01_11-24-04/

[Sergei Glushchenko (sergei.glushchenko)]

It should look like

xtrabackup --decompress --target-dir=/data/backup/2013-08-01_11-24-04/

[Hrvoje Matijakovic (hrvojem)]

Fixed here: https://github.com/percona/percona-xtrabackup/pull/321

[Hrvoje Matijakovic (hrvojem)]

2.4 fixed here: https://github.com/percona/percona-xtrabackup/pull/322

[Shahriyar Rzayev (rzayev-sehriyar)]

Percona now uses JIRA for bug reports so this bug report is migrated to: https://jira.percona.com/browse/PXB-447