-restore djgpp, eventually
-merge TODO lists
-add unit tests for lib/*.c
-
-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 Beware: some are quite old and no longer valid.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.
-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.
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
-
-m4: rename all macros that start with AC_ to start with another prefix
-
-resolve RH report on cp -a forwarded by Tim Waugh
-
-Martin Michlmayr's patch to provide ls with `--sort directory' option
-
tail: don't use xlseek; it *exits*.
Instead, maybe use a macro and return nonzero.
-add mktemp? Suggested by Nelson Beebe
-
-df: alignment problem of `Used' heading with e.g., -mP
- reported by Karl Berry
-
tr: support nontrivial equivalence classes, e.g. [=e=] with LC_COLLATE=fr_FR
-fix tail -f to work with named pipes; reported by Ian D. Allen
- $ mkfifo j; tail -f j & sleep 1; echo x > j
- ./tail: j: file truncated
- ./tail: j: cannot seek to offset 0: Illegal seek
-
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.
-sort: Compress temporary files when doing large external sort/merges.
- This improves performance when you can compress/uncompress faster than
- you can read/write, which is common in these days of fast CPUs.
- suggestion from Charles Randall on 2001-08-10
-
-sort: Add an ordering option -R that causes 'sort' to sort according
- to a random permutation of the correct sort order. Also, add an
- option --random-seed=SEED that causes 'sort' to use an arbitrary
- string SEED to select which permutations to use, in a deterministic
- manner: that is, if you sort a permutation of the same input file
- with the same --random-seed=SEED option twice, you'll get the same
- output. The default SEED is chosen at random, and contains enough
- information to ensure that the output permutation is random.
- suggestion from Feth AREZKI, Stephan Kasal, and Paul Eggert on 2003-07-17
-
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"
5.3.1, who credits Lester Ford, Jr. and Selmer Johnson, American
Mathematical Monthly 66 (1959), 387-389.
-cp --recursive: perform dir traversals in source and dest hierarchy rather
- than forming full file names. The latter (current) approach fails
- unnecessarily when the names become very long.
-
-tail --p is now ambiguous
-
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, post-5.2.1:
+Changes expected to go in, someday.
======================================
- wc: add an option, --files0-from [as for du] to make it read NUL-delimited
- file name arguments from a file.
-
dd patch from Olivier Delhomme
- Apply Andreas Gruenbacher's ACL and xattr changes
-
- Apply Bruno Haible's hostname changes
-
test/mv/*: clean up $other_partition_tmpdir in all cases
ls: when both -l and --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir are
an implicit --NO-dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir meaning.
Pointed out by Karl Berry.
- A more efficient version of factor, and possibly one that
- accepts inputs of size 2^64 and larger.
-
- Re-add a separate test for du's stack space usage (like the one removed
- from tests/rm/deep-1).
-
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:
------------------------
- ls --color: Ed Avis' patch to suppress escape sequences for
- non-highlighted files
-
getpwnam from Bruce Korb
pb (progress bar) from Miika Pekkarinen
- Look into improving the performance of md5sum.
- `openssl md5' is consistently about 30% faster than md5sum on an idle
- AMD 2000-XP system with plenty of RAM and a 261 MB input file.
- openssl's md5 implementation is in assembly, generated by a perl script.
+ ------------------------------
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+pr's use of nstrftime can make it malloc a very large (up to SIZE_MAX) buffer
+
+-----
+
+Copyright (C) 2002-2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.