** Bug fixes
+ du -x no longer counts root directories of other file systems.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
+
+ ls --color many-entry-directory was uninterruptible for too long
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-5.2.1]
+
+ ls's -k option no longer affects how ls -l outputs file sizes.
+ It now affects only the per-directory block counts written by -l,
+ and the sizes written by -s. This is for compatibility with BSD
+ and with POSIX 2008. Because -k is no longer equivalent to
+ --block-size=1KiB, a new long option --kibibyte stands for -k.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.4]
+
+ ls -l would leak a little memory (security context string) for each
+ nonempty directory listed on the command line, when using SELinux.
+ [bug probably introduced in coreutils-6.10 with SELinux support]
+
+ rm -rf DIR would fail with "Device or resource busy" on Cygwin with NWFS
+ and NcFsd file systems. This did not affect Unix/Linux-based kernels.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0, when rm began using fts]
+
+ stat -f now recognizes the FhGFS and PipeFS file system types.
+
+ tac no longer fails to handle two or more non-seekable inputs
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
+
+ tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on GPFS or FhGFS file systems
+ [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
+ support, but the new magic numbers weren't in the usual places then.]
+
+** Changes in behavior
+
+ tail -f now uses polling (not inotify) when any of its file arguments
+ resides on a file system of unknown type. In addition, for each such
+ argument, tail -f prints a warning with the FS type magic number and a
+ request to report it to the bug-reporting address.
+
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 8.14 (2011-10-12) [stable]
+
+** Bug fixes
+
+ ls --dereference no longer outputs erroneous "argetm" strings for
+ dangling symlinks when an 'ln=target' entry is in $LS_COLORS.
+ [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
+
+ ls -lL symlink once again properly prints "+" when the referent has an ACL.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-8.13]
+
+ sort -g no longer infloops for certain inputs containing NaNs
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
+
+** Improvements
+
+ md5sum --check now supports the -r format from the corresponding BSD tool.
+ This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
+
+ pwd now works also on systems without openat. On such systems, pwd
+ would fail when run from a directory whose absolute name contained
+ more than PATH_MAX / 3 components. The df, stat and readlink programs
+ are also affected due to their use of the canonicalize_* functions.
+
+** Changes in behavior
+
+ timeout now only processes the first signal received from the set
+ it is handling (SIGTERM, SIGINT, ...). This is to support systems that
+ implicitly create threads for some timer functions (like GNU/kFreeBSD).
+
+** Build-related
+
+ "make dist" no longer builds .tar.gz files.
+ xz is portable enough and in wide-enough use that distributing
+ only .tar.xz files is enough.
+
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 8.13 (2011-09-08) [stable]
+
+** Bug fixes
+
+ chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
+ I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
+ [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
+
+ cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination
+ directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8]
+
+ cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy
+ of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b
+ are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b
+ to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a.
+ [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
+
+ fts-using tools (rm, du, chmod, chgrp, chown, chcon) no longer use memory
+ proportional to the number of entries in each directory they process.
+ Before, rm -rf 4-million-entry-directory would consume about 1GiB of memory.
+ Now, it uses less than 30MB, no matter how many entries there are.
+ [this bug was inherent in the use of fts: thus, for rm the bug was
+ introduced in coreutils-8.0. The prior implementation of rm did not use
+ as much memory. du, chmod, chgrp and chown started using fts in 6.0.
+ chcon was added in coreutils-6.9.91 with fts support. ]
+
+ pr -T no longer ignores a specified LAST_PAGE to stop at.
+ [bug introduced in textutils-1.19q]
+
+ printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
+ [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
+
+ split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
+
+ timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group.
+ timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process.
+ [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0]
+
+ unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop,
+ followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment.
+ We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
+
+** Changes in behavior
+
+ chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
+ when -v or -c specified.
+
+ cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer
+ files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source.
+
+** New features
+
+ date now accepts ISO 8601 date-time strings with "T" as the
+ separator. It has long parsed dates like "2004-02-29 16:21:42"
+ with a space between the date and time strings. Now it also parses
+ "2004-02-29T16:21:42" and fractional-second and time-zone-annotated
+ variants like "2004-02-29T16:21:42.333-07:00"
+
+ md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
+ tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
+ This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
+
+ split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
+ through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
+ the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
+ split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
+ split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
+ Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
+ That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
+
+ timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
+ directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
+ receive signals initiated from the terminal.
+
+** Improvements
+
+ cp -p now copies trivial NSFv4 ACLs on Solaris 10. Before, it would
+ mistakenly apply a non-trivial ACL to the destination file.
+
+ cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
+ in gnulib.
+
+ df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5
+ or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer.
+
+ join --check-order now prints "join: FILE:LINE_NUMBER: bad_line" for an
+ unsorted input, rather than e.g., "join: file 1 is not in sorted order".
+
+ shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
+ For example `shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2` no longer exhausts memory.
+
+ stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types.
+
+ timeout now supports sub-second timeouts.
+
+** Build-related
+
+ Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
+ when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
+
+ Numerous portability and build improvements inherited via gnulib.
+
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
+
+** Bug fixes
+
+ tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
+ with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
+
+** Changes in behavior
+
+ cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
+ of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
+ - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
+ - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
+ Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
+ for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
+ resolved for 2.6.39.
+ - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
+ Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
+ the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
+
+** Portability
+
+ dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
+
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
+
+** Bug fixes
+
+ cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
+ copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
+
+ cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
+ which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
+
+ cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
+ delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
+
+ du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
+
+ sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
+
+ touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
+
+ wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
+
+** New features
+
+ dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
+ which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
+ processed portion thereof.
+
+ dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
+ in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
+
+** Changes in behavior
+
+ cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
+ The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
+ [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
+
+ cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
+ It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
+ create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
+
+ df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
+ with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
+
+ install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
+ Use --preserve-context instead.
+
+ test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
+
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
+
+** Bug fixes
+
du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
** New features
+ cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
+ support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
+ when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
+ non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
+ output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
+ it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
+ reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
+ when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
+
join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
the same number of fields are output for each line.
if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
- tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
+ tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
[bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
- ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
+ "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
- no matter how many files are in a given directory
+ no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
+ with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
+** New features
+
+ cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on
+ file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and
+ 'futimens' system calls.
+
** Bug fixes
chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
"rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
- "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
+ "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
"mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
========================================================================
-Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (C) 2001-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or