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[coreutils] what belongs in the next coreutils release?


From: Jim Meyering
Subject: [coreutils] what belongs in the next coreutils release?
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 21:29:32 +0200

It's been 5 months since coreutils-8.5, and the list of NEWS
entries is long enough that I think we'd do well to make a release.
I've included those entries below.

Other than the imminent fix for tr's assert-on-invalid-inputs bug,
is there anything people would like to see included?

FIEMAP copy does not seem close enough, and even if it
were complete, I'd want it to get more exposure before putting
it in a release.

---------------------------------------
* Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]

** Bug fixes

  du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
  link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
  following symlinks or via multiple arguments.

  du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
  symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.

  tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]

** New features

  cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
  which is useful for efficiently modifying files.

  du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
  with FreeBSD.

  sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
  line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.

  sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.

  stat now accepts the %m format directive to output
  the mount point for a file.

** Changes in behavior

  df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
  rather than its aliased target.

  du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
  with many hard-linked files.  With --count-links (-l), or when
  operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.

  ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
  the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
  not been specified.  The new approach has nicer behavior in some
  locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
  of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
  locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
  [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
   for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]

  sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.

  sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
  no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".".  It now considers all
  zeros to be equal.

  sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
  the sorting operation.  The number of sorts run concurrently can be
  limited with the --parallel option or with external process
  control like taskset for example.

  stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option.  Initially it was
  merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility.  Starting two years
  ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning.

  touch's --file option is no longer recognized.  Use --reference=F (-r)
  instead.  --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
  elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.

  truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
  Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
  relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.


* Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
...



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