GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
-* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
+* Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (????-??-??) [beta]
+
+** New programs
+
+ timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
+ truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
+
+** New features
+
+ comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
+ be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
+
+ comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
+ of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
+
+ md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
+ 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
+
+** Bug fixes
+
+ od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
+ probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
+
+** Improvements
+
+ Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
+ HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
+ of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
+
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
+
+** Bug fixes
+
+ chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
+
+ cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
+ "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
+ permissions from the some-fifo argument.
+
+ id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
+ with no USERNAME argument.
+
+ id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
+ Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
+ was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
+
+ uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
+ In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
+ On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
+ number of fields for some inputs.
+
+ tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
+ "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
+
+** Changes in behavior
+
+ install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
+ [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
+
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
+
+** Bug fixes
+
+ configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
+
+ "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
+ -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
+ with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
+ to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
+
+ dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
+ of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
+
+ id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
+ much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
+
+ ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
+ of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
+
+ md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
+ echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
+ sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
+
+ md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
+ and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
+ and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
+ Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
+ sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
+ [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
+
+ "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
+ mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
+
+ mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
+ when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
+
+ "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
+ stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
+
+ "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
+ [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
+
+ "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
+ the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
+ at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
+ --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
+
+ "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
+ prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
+
+ "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
+ in more cases when a directory is empty.
+
+ "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
+ rather than reporting the invalid string format.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
+
+** New features
+
+ join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
+ be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
+
+ sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
+ general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
+ options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
+ and --random-sort/-R, resp.
+
+** Improvements
+
+ id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
+ would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
+
+ ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
+
+ seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
+
+** Portability
+
+ rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
+ which have negative errno values.
+
+** Consistency
+
+ install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
+ not to stderr.
+
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
+
+** Bug fixes
+
+ Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
+
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
+
+** Bug fixes
+
+ cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
+ permissions of a just-created destination directory.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
+
+ tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
+ of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
+ env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
+
+** Improvements
+
+ "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
+ whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
+ Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
+ fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
+
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
+
+** Bug fixes
+
+ "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
+
+ "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
+ in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
+ [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
+
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
** New programs
arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
+ chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
+
+ mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
+
+ runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
+
** Programs no longer installed by default
hostname, su
** Changes in behavior
+ cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
+ Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
+
pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
** New features
- Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
+ Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
+ * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
+ * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
+ Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
+ not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
+ similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
+ * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
+ * id accepts new "-Z" option.
+ * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
+ * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
+ * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
+
+ The following commands and options now support the standard size
+ suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
+ head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
+ tail -c, tail -n.
+
+ cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
+ is not possible.
uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
loss of the contents of a/f.
stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
- in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
+ in its 35-colon command-line argument
** Bug fixes
reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
- cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
- [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
- longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
- components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
- d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
- destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
- copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
- to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
- doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
- the destination is a symlink.
+ cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
+ name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
+ no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
+ symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
+ or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
+ "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
+ nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
+ destination is a symlink.
"cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
+ date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
+ in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
+
du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
in the total size.
of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
+ ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
+ no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
+ and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
+
seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
+ seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
+ and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
+
+ "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
+
Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
"env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
[this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
- complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
+ complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
+
+ tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
+ [present in the original version]
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
directory is unreadable.
+ rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
+ when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
+ and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
+
+ rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
+ conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
+ directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
+ to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
+ with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
+ to remove it.
+
"rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
Before it would print nothing.
"rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
+ "rm -rf D" would emit an 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
+ a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
+ $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
+ $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
+ mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
+ Now it prints this:
+ mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
+
** New features
sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
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