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1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.2.11
3 ** Bug Fixes
4 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
5 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
6 ** Functionality Changes
7 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
8 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
9 a more helpful error message.
10 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
11 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
12 statistics about the locate databases.
13 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
14 ** Documentation improvements
15 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
16 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
17 ** Bug Fixes
18 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
19 prevented this).
21 * Major changes in release 4.2.10
22 ** Bug Fixes
23 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
24 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
25 systems too.
27 * Major changes in release 4.2.9
28 ** Functionality Changes
29 *** 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_".
30 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
31 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
32 now deprecated.
33 ** Bug Fixes
34 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
35 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
36 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
37 for next time.
38 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
39 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
40 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
41 ** Documentation improvements
42 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
43 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
45 * Major changes in release 4.2.8
46 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
47 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
48 findutils-4.2.8.
50 * Major changes in release 4.2.7
51 ** Functionality Changes
52 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
53 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
54 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
55 ** Documentation improvements
56 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
57 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
58 are not are explained in this chapter.
59 ** Bug Fixes
60 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
61 have it.
62 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
63 on Solaris).
64 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
65 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
67 * Major changes in release 4.2.6
68 ** Bug Fixes
69 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
70 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
71 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
72 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
73 #9043.
75 * Major changes in release 4.2.5
76 ** Functionality Changes
77 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
78 find will follow symbolic links.
79 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
80 it is the default).
81 ** Documentation improvements
82 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
83 ** Bug Fixes
84 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
85 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
86 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
87 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
88 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
89 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
90 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
92 * Major changes in release 4.2.4
93 ** Functionality Changes
94 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
95 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
96 locate).
97 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
98 doesn't support that much).
99 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
100 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
101 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
102 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
103 by the use of the -nowarn option.
104 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
105 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
106 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
107 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
108 grep -c).
109 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
110 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
111 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
112 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
113 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
114 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
115 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
116 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
117 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
118 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
119 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
120 ** Bug Fixes
121 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
122 systems that have non-writable string constants.
123 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
124 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
125 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
126 value).
127 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
129 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
130 ** Functionality Changes
131 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
132 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
133 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
134 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
135 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
136 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
137 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
138 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
139 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
140 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
141 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
142 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
143 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
144 directory we've just returned out of).
145 ** Other Changes
146 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
148 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
149 ** Documentation improvements
150 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
151 ** Bug Fixes
152 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
153 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
154 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
155 ** Other Changes
156 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
157 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
158 now.
159 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
160 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
161 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
162 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
164 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
165 ** Bug Fixes
166 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
167 requires it, as explained at
168 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
170 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
171 ** Bug Fixes
172 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
173 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
174 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
175 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
176 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
177 ** Other Changes
178 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
180 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
181 ** Functionality Changes
182 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
183 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
184 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
185 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
186 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
187 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
188 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
189 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
190 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
191 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
192 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
193 find stats the file. There is also an option
194 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
195 ** Documentation improvements
196 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
197 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
198 The find manual page also now includes a section
199 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
200 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
201 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
202 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
203 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
204 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
205 has been improved.
206 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
207 ** Bug Fixes
208 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
209 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
210 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
211 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
212 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
213 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
214 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
215 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
216 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
217 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
218 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
219 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
220 database if it fails.
221 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
222 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
223 locate database.
224 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
225 This was broken in 4.1.20.
227 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
228 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
229 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
230 a gap just in case.
231 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
232 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
233 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
234 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
235 README-CVS).
236 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
238 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
239 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
240 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
242 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
243 correct bug in prune.
244 added --ignore-case option for locate
246 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
247 Add support for large files
249 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
250 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
252 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
253 added internationalization and localization.
255 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
256 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
257 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
259 * Major changes in release 4.1:
261 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
262 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
263 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
264 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
265 \f
266 * Major changes in release 4.0:
268 ** Documentation:
269 *** Texinfo manual.
270 *** Man page for updatedb.
271 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
273 ** find:
274 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
275 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
276 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
277 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
278 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
279 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
281 ** locate:
282 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
283 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
284 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
285 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
286 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
287 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
288 some systems.
289 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
291 ** updatedb:
292 *** Takes command-line options.
294 ** xargs:
295 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
296 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
297 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
298 \f
299 * Major changes in release 3.8:
301 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
302 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
303 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
304 \f
305 * Major changes in release 3.7:
307 ** locate can search multiple databases
308 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
309 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
311 --//--
312 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
314 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
315 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
316 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
317 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
318 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf