1 These are the GNU core utilities. This package is the union of
2 the GNU fileutils, sh-utils, and textutils packages.
4 Most of these programs have significant advantages over their Unix
5 counterparts, such as greater speed, additional options, and fewer
8 The programs that can be built with this package are:
10 [ basename cat chgrp chmod chown chroot cksum comm cp csplit cut date dd
11 df dir dircolors dirname du echo env expand expr factor false fmt fold
12 ginstall groups head hostid hostname id join kill link ln logname ls
13 md5sum mkdir mkfifo mknod mv nice nl nohup od paste pathchk pinky pr
14 printenv printf ptx pwd readlink rm rmdir seq sha1sum sha224sum sha256sum
15 sha384sum sha512sum shred sleep sort split stat stty su sum sync tac tail
16 tee test touch tr true tsort tty uname unexpand uniq unlink uptime users
17 vdir wc who whoami yes
19 See the file NEWS for a list of major changes in the current release.
21 See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions.
23 These programs are intended to conform to POSIX (with BSD and other
24 extensions), like the rest of the GNU system. By default they conform
25 to older POSIX (1003.2-1992), and therefore support obsolete usages
26 like "head -10" and "chown owner.group file". This default is
27 overridden at build-time by the value of <unistd.h>'s _POSIX2_VERSION
28 macro, and this in turn can be overridden at runtime as described in
29 the documentation under "Standards conformance".
31 The ls, dir, and vdir commands are all separate executables instead of
32 one program that checks argv[0] because people often rename these
33 programs to things like gls, gnuls, l, etc. Renaming a program
34 file shouldn't affect how it operates, so that people can get the
35 behavior they want with whatever name they want.
37 Special thanks to Paul Eggert, Brian Matthews, Bruce Evans, Karl Berry,
38 Kaveh Ghazi, and François Pinard for help with debugging and porting
39 these programs. Many thanks to all of the people who have taken the
40 time to submit problem reports and fixes. All contributed changes are
41 attributed in the ChangeLog files.
43 And thanks to the following people who have provided accounts for
44 portability testing on many different types of systems: Bob Proulx,
45 Christian Robert, François Pinard, Greg McGary, Harlan Stenn,
46 Joel N. Weber, Mark D. Roth, Matt Schalit, Nelson H. F. Beebe,
47 Réjean Payette, Sam Tardieu.
49 Thanks to Michael Stone for inflicting test releases of this package
50 on Debian's unstable distribution, and to all the kind folks who used
51 that distribution and found and reported bugs.
53 Note that each man page is now automatically generated from a template
54 and from the corresponding --help usage message. Patches to the template
55 files (man/*.x) are welcome. However, the authoritative documentation
56 is in texinfo form in the doc directory.
58 If you run the tests on a SunOS4.1.4 system, expect the ctime-part of
59 the ls `time-1' test to fail. I believe that is due to a bug in the
60 way Sun implemented link(2) and chmod(2).
63 ***********************
64 HPUX 11.x build failure
65 -----------------------
67 A known problem exists when compiling on HPUX on both hppa and ia64
68 in 64-bit mode (i.e. +DD64) on HP-UX 11.0, 11.11, and 11.23. This
69 is not due to a bug in the package but instead due to a bug in the
70 system header file which breaks things in 64-bit mode. The default
71 compilation mode is 32-bit and the software compiles fine using the
72 default mode. To build this software in 64-bit mode you will need
73 to fix the system /usr/include/inttypes.h header file. After
74 correcting that file the software also compiles fine in 64-bit mode.
75 Here is one possible patch to correct the problem:
77 --- /usr/include/inttypes.h.orig Thu May 30 01:00:00 1996
78 +++ /usr/include/inttypes.h Sun Mar 23 00:20:36 2003
80 -#ifndef __STDC_32_MODE__
84 **********************
85 Running tests as root:
86 ----------------------
88 If you run the tests as root, note that a few of them create files
89 and/or run programs as a non-root user, `nobody' by default.
90 If you want to use some other non-root username, specify it via
91 the NON_ROOT_USERNAME environment variable. Depending on the
92 permissions with which the working directories have been created,
93 using `nobody' may fail, because that user won't have the required
94 read and write access to the build and test directories.
95 I find that it is best to unpack and build as a non-privileged
96 user, and then to run the following command as that user in order
97 to run the privilege-requiring tests:
99 sudo env NON_ROOT_USERNAME=$USER make -k check
101 If you can run the tests as root, please do so and report any
102 problems. We get much less test coverage in that mode, and it's
103 arguably more important that these tools work well when run by
104 root than when run by less privileged users.
111 IMPORTANT: if you take the time to report a test failure,
112 please be sure to include the output of running `make check'
113 in verbose mode for each each failing test. For example,
114 if the test that fails is tests/mv/hard-link-1, then you
115 would run this command:
117 env VERBOSE=yes make check -C tests/mv TESTS=hard-link-1 >> log 2>&1
119 For some tests, you can get even more detail by including
120 DEBUG=yes in the environment:
122 env DEBUG=yes VERBOSE=yes make check -C tests/mv TESTS=hard-link-1 >> log 2>&1
124 and then include the contents of the file `log' in your bug report.
126 ***************************************
128 There are pretty many tests, but nowhere near as many as we need.
129 Additions and corrections are very welcome.
131 If you see a problem that you've already reported, feel free to re-report
132 it -- it won't bother me to get a reminder. Besides, the more messages I
133 get regarding a particular problem the sooner it'll be fixed -- usually.
134 If you sent a complete patch and, after a couple weeks you haven't
135 received any acknowledgement, please ping us. A complete patch includes
136 a well-written ChangeLog entry, unified (diff -u format) diffs relative
137 to the most recent test release (or, better, relative to the latest
138 sources in the CVS repository), an explanation for why the patch is
139 necessary or useful, and if at all possible, enough information to
140 reproduce whatever problem prompted it. Plus, you'll earn lots of
141 karma if you include a test case to exercise any bug(s) you fix.
142 Instructions for checking out the latest source via CVS are here:
144 http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group=coreutils
147 If your patch adds a new feature, please try to get some sort of consensus
148 that it is a worthwhile change. One way to do that is to send mail to
149 bug-coreutils@gnu.org including as much description and justification
150 as you can. Based on the feedback that generates, you may be able to
151 convince us that it's worth adding.
154 WARNING: If you modify files like configure.in, m4/*.m4, aclocal.m4,
155 or any Makefile.am, then don't be surprised if what gets regenerated no
156 longer works. To make things work, you'll have to be using appropriate
157 versions of automake and autoconf. As for what versions are `appropriate',
160 * autoconf specified via AC_PREREQ in m4/jm-macros.m4
161 * automake specified via AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE in configure.ac
163 Usually it's fine to use versions that are newer than those specified.
165 All of these programs except `test' recognize the `--version' option.
166 When reporting bugs, please include in the subject line both the package
167 name/version and the name of the program for which you found a problem.
169 For general documentation on the coding and usage standards
170 this distribution follows, see the GNU Coding Standards,
171 http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html.
173 Mail suggestions and bug reports for these programs to
174 the address on the last line of --help output.