1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.2.22-CVS
4 ** Functional Changes to locate
6 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
7 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
8 later instances are ignored.
12 * Major changes in release 4.2.21
13 ** Functional Changes to find
15 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
16 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
17 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
18 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
20 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
21 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
22 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
23 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
24 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
25 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
28 ** Functional Changes to locate
30 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
31 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
32 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
33 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
34 different set of results).
36 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
37 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
40 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
42 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
43 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
45 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
46 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
48 * Major changes in release 4.2.20
49 ** Internationalization and Localization
50 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
53 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
54 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
56 * Major changes in release 4.2.19
59 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
60 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
61 (Savannah bug #12044).
63 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
64 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
65 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
68 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
69 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
71 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
72 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
73 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
74 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
75 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
77 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
79 ** Functionality Changes
80 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
81 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
82 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
84 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
86 ** Documentation enhancements
87 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
89 ** Internationalization and Localization
90 New Vietnamese message translation.
92 * Major changes in release 4.2.18
94 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
95 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
96 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
97 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
99 ** Documentation improvements
100 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
102 * Major changes in release 4.2.17
104 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
105 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
106 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
107 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
108 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
109 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
112 * Major changes in release 4.2.16
113 ** Functionality Changes
114 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
115 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
117 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
118 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
119 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
122 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
125 * Major changes in release 4.2.15
126 ** Functionality Changes
127 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
128 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
130 * Major changes in release 4.2.14
131 ** Functionality Changes
132 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
134 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
135 distributed tar file more than once.
136 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
137 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
138 ** Documentation improvements
139 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
141 * Major changes in release 4.2.13
142 ** Performance Enhancements
143 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
144 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
145 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
146 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
147 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
149 * Major changes in release 4.2.12
150 ** Functionality Changes
151 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
152 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
153 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
154 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
155 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
156 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
157 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
159 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
160 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
161 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
163 * Major changes in release 4.2.11
165 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
166 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
167 ** Functionality Changes
168 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
169 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
170 a more helpful error message.
171 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
172 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
173 statistics about the locate databases.
174 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
175 ** Documentation improvements
176 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
177 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
179 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
182 * Major changes in release 4.2.10
184 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
185 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
188 * Major changes in release 4.2.9
189 ** Functionality Changes
190 *** xargs no longer treats a line containing only an underscore as a logical end-of-file. To obtain the behaviour that was previously the default, use "-E_".
191 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
192 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
195 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
196 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
197 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
199 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
200 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
201 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
202 ** Documentation improvements
203 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
204 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
206 * Major changes in release 4.2.8
207 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
208 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
211 * Major changes in release 4.2.7
212 ** Functionality Changes
213 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
214 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
215 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
216 ** Documentation improvements
217 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
218 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
219 are not are explained in this chapter.
221 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
223 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
225 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
226 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
228 * Major changes in release 4.2.6
230 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
231 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
232 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
233 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
236 * Major changes in release 4.2.5
237 ** Functionality Changes
238 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
239 find will follow symbolic links.
240 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
242 ** Documentation improvements
243 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
245 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
246 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
247 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
248 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
249 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
250 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
251 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
253 * Major changes in release 4.2.4
254 ** Functionality Changes
255 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
256 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
258 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
259 doesn't support that much).
260 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
261 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
262 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
263 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
264 by the use of the -nowarn option.
265 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
266 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
267 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
268 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
270 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
271 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
272 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
273 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
274 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
275 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
276 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
277 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
278 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
279 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
280 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
282 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
283 systems that have non-writable string constants.
284 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
285 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
286 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
288 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
290 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
291 ** Functionality Changes
292 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
293 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
294 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
295 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
296 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
297 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
298 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
299 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
300 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
301 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
302 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
303 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
304 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
305 directory we've just returned out of).
307 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
309 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
310 ** Documentation improvements
311 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
313 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
314 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
315 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
317 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
318 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
320 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
321 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
322 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
323 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
325 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
327 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
328 requires it, as explained at
329 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
331 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
333 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
334 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
335 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
336 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
337 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
339 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
341 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
342 ** Functionality Changes
343 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
344 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
345 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
346 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
347 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
348 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
349 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
350 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
351 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
352 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
353 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
354 find stats the file. There is also an option
355 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
356 ** Documentation improvements
357 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
358 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
359 The find manual page also now includes a section
360 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
361 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
362 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
363 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
364 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
365 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
367 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
369 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
370 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
371 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
372 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
373 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
374 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
375 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
376 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
377 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
378 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
379 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
380 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
381 database if it fails.
382 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
383 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
385 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
386 This was broken in 4.1.20.
388 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
389 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
390 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
392 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
393 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
394 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
395 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
397 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
399 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
400 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
401 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
403 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
404 correct bug in prune.
405 added --ignore-case option for locate
407 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
408 Add support for large files
410 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
411 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
413 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
414 added internationalization and localization.
416 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
417 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
418 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
420 * Major changes in release 4.1:
422 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
423 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
424 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
425 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
427 * Major changes in release 4.0:
431 *** Man page for updatedb.
432 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
435 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
436 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
437 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
438 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
439 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
440 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
443 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
444 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
445 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
446 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
447 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
448 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
450 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
453 *** Takes command-line options.
456 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
457 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
458 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
460 * Major changes in release 3.8:
462 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
463 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
464 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
466 * Major changes in release 3.7:
468 ** locate can search multiple databases
469 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
470 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
473 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
475 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
476 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
477 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
478 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
479 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf