-restore djgpp, eventually
-merge TODO lists
-add unit tests for lib/*.c
-rewrite lib/ftw.c not to use explicit recursion, and then use nftw in
- chown, chgrp, chmod, du
-
-strip: add an option to specify the program used to strip binaries.
+If you're interested in helping, here are some tasks that we've considered
+over the years. Beware: some are quite old and no longer valid. To avoid
+wasting your time by duplicating work or by working on a task that is no
+longer pertinent, please search the mailing list and post your intent
+before embarking on a big project.
+
+==================================================
+Modify chmod so that it does not change an inode's st_ctime
+ when the selected operation would have no other effect.
+ First suggested by Hans Ecke <http://hans.ecke.ws> in
+ http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.bugs/2920
+ Discussed more recently on <http://bugs.debian.org/497514>.
+
+document the following in coreutils.texi:
+ runcon
+ chcon
+ mktemp
+ [
+ pinky
+Also document the SELinux changes.
+
+Suggestion from Paul Eggert:
+ More generally, there's not that much use for imaxtostr nowadays,
+ since the inttypes module and newer versions of gettext allow things
+ like _("truncating %s at %" PRIdMAX " bytes") to work portably.
+ I suspect that (if someone cares to take the time) we can remove
+ all instances of imaxtostr and umaxtostr in coreutils and gnulib.
+
+cp --recursive: use fts and *at functions to perform directory traversals
+ in source and destination hierarchy rather than forming full file names.
+ The latter (current) approach fails unnecessarily when the names
+ become very long, and requires space and time that is quadratic in the
+ depth of the hierarchy. [Bo Borgerson is working on this]
+
+printf:
+ Now that gnulib supports *printf("%a"), import one of the
+ *printf-posix modules so that printf(1) will support %a even on
+ platforms where the native *printf(3) is deficient.
+ Suggestion from Eric Blake.
+
+renice: POSIX utility, needs implementing.
+ suggestion from Karl Berry (among others).
+ Bob Proulx is working on this.
+
+install: add an option to specify the program used to strip binaries.
suggestion from Karl Berry
doc/coreutils.texi:
Address this comment: FIXME: mv's behavior in this case is system-dependent
Better still: fix the code so it's *not* system-dependent.
-implement --target-directory=DIR for install (per texinfo documentation)
-
ls: add --format=FORMAT option that controls how each line is printed.
cp --no-preserve=X should not attempt to preserve attribute X
no longer incurs the overhead of saving src. dev/ino and dest. filename
in the hash table.
-Apply suggestion from Paul Jarc to use something along the
-lines of http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/setuidgid.html to avoid
-kludges (as in tests/rm/fail-2eperm) when running tests as root.
-
-See if we can be consistent about where --verbose sends its output:
- These all send --verbose output to stdout:
- head, tail, rm, cp, mv, ln, chmod, chown, chgrp, install, ln
- These send it to stderr:
- shred mkdir split
- readlink is different
-
Write an autoconf test to work around build failure in HPUX's 64-bit mode.
See notes in README -- and remove them once there's a work-around.
-after 5.0, change doc strings (like df, ls, etc) not to use `,'
-as thousands separator in e.g. 1,000,000. Instead, do this:
-
- SIZE may be (or may be an integer optionally followed by) one of following:
- kB 1000, K 1024, MB 1000*1000, M 1024*1024 and so on for G, T, P, E, Z, Y.
-
Integrate use of sendfile, suggested here:
http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-fileutils/2003-03/msg00030.html
I don't plan to do that, since a few tests demonstrate no significant benefit.
df: add `--total' option, suggested here http://bugs.debian.org/186007
-seq: give better diagnostics for invalid formats:
- e.g. no or too many % directives
-seq: consider allowing format string to contain no %-directives
+tail: don't use xlseek; it *exits*.
+ Instead, maybe use a macro and return nonzero.
+
+tr: support nontrivial equivalence classes, e.g. [=e=] with LC_COLLATE=fr_FR
+
+lib/strftime.c: Since %N is the only format that we need but that
+ glibc's strftime doesn't support, consider using a wrapper that
+ would expand /%(-_)?\d*N/ to the desired string and then pass the
+ resulting string to glibc's strftime.
+
+unexpand: [http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xcu/unexpand.html]
+ printf 'x\t \t y\n'|unexpand -t 8,9 should print its input, unmodified.
+ printf 'x\t \t y\n'|unexpand -t 5,8 should print "x\ty\n"
+
+Let GNU su use the `wheel' group if appropriate.
+ (there are a couple patches, already)
+
+sort: Investigate better sorting algorithms; see Knuth vol. 3.
+
+ We tried list merge sort, but it was about 50% slower than the
+ recursive algorithm currently used by sortlines, and it used more
+ comparisons. We're not sure why this was, as the theory suggests it
+ should do fewer comparisons, so perhaps this should be revisited.
+ List merge sort was implemented in the style of Knuth algorithm
+ 5.2.4L, with the optimization suggested by exercise 5.2.4-22. The
+ test case was 140,213,394 bytes, 426,4424 lines, text taken from the
+ GCC 3.3 distribution, sort.c compiled with GCC 2.95.4 and running on
+ Debian 3.0r1 GNU/Linux, 2.4GHz Pentium 4, single pass with no
+ temporary files and plenty of RAM.
+
+ Since comparisons seem to be the bottleneck, perhaps the best
+ algorithm to try next should be merge insertion. See Knuth section
+ 5.3.1, who credits Lester Ford, Jr. and Selmer Johnson, American
+ Mathematical Monthly 66 (1959), 387-389.
+
+Remove suspicious uses of alloca (ones that may allocate more than
+ about 4k)
+
+Adapt these contribution guidelines for coreutils:
+ http://sources.redhat.com/automake/contribute.html
+
+Improve test coverage.
+ See HACKING for instructions on generating an html test coverage report.
+ Find a program that has poor coverage and improve.
+
+Changes expected to go in, someday.
+======================================
+
+ dd patch from Olivier Delhomme
+
+ test/mv/*: clean up $other_partition_tmpdir in all cases
+
+ ls: when both -l and --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir are
+ specified, consider whether to let the latter select whether to
+ dereference command line symlinks to directories. Since -l has
+ an implicit --NO-dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir meaning.
+ Pointed out by Karl Berry.
+
+ dd: consider adding an option to suppress `bytes/block read/written'
+ output to stderr. Suggested here:
+ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=165045
+
+ Pending copyright papers:
+ ------------------------
+ getpwnam from Bruce Korb
+
+ pb (progress bar) from Miika Pekkarinen
+
+ ------------------------------
+
+Remove long-deprecated options. Search case-insensitive for
+`deprecated' and `remove in '. Automate this.
+
+Add a distcheck-time test to ensure that every distributed
+file is either read-only(indicating generated) or is
+version-controlled and up to date.
+
+remove `%s' notation (now that they're all gone, add a maint.mk sc_
+ rule to ensure no new ones are added):
+ grep -E "\`%.{,4}s'" src/*.c
+
+remove all uses of the `register' keyword: Done. add a maint.mk rule
+ for this, too.
+
+remove or adjust chown's --changes option, since it
+ can't always do what it currently says it does.
+
+Support arbitrary-precision arithmetic in those tools for which it
+makes sense. Factor and expr already support this via libgmp.
+The "test" program is covered via its string-based comparison of
+integers. To be converted: seq.
-dd: consider adding an option to suppress `bytes/block read/written'
-output to stderr. Suggested here:
- http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=165045
+Adapt tools like wc, tr, fmt, etc. (most of the textutils) to be
+ multibyte aware. The problem is that I want to avoid duplicating
+ significant blocks of logic, yet I also want to incur only minimal
+ (preferably `no') cost when operating in single-byte mode.
-m4: rename all macros that start with AC_ to start with another prefix
+pr's use of nstrftime can make it malloc a very large (up to SIZE_MAX) buffer
-document that `true --version' can fail, e.g., like this:
- ./true --version >&-
- ./true: write error: Bad file number
- Reported by Paul Eggert
+-----
-resolve RH report on cp -a forwarded by Tim Waugh
+Copyright (C) 2002-2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
-Martin Michlmayr's patch to provide ls with `--sort directory' option
+This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
+it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
+(at your option) any later version.
-clean-up: Remove anachronistic casts of xmalloc, xrealloc, and xcalloc
-return values found by this:
- grep -E '\*\) *x(m|c|re)alloc\>' {lib,src}/*.[ch]
-Fix with this:
- perl -pi -e 's/\([^(]*?\*\) *(x(m|c|re)alloc)\b/$1/'
-Also remove anachronistic casts of xrealloc's first argument.
+This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
+GNU General Public License for more details.
-Remove uses of PROTOTYPES
+You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
projects / platform / upstream / coreutils.git / blobdiff