I am pleased to announce the release of version 4.5.12 of GNU findutils. GNU findutils is a set of software tools for finding files that match certain criteria and for performing various operations on them. Findutils includes the programs "find", "xargs" and "locate". More information about findutils is available at http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/.
This is a "development" release of findutils. It can be downloaded from ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/findutils. The 4.5.x release series is intended to allow people to try out, comment on or contribute to new features of findutils. During the 4.5.x release series some features may be introduced and then changed or removed as a result of feedback or experience. In short, please don't rely on backward compatibility later in the release series. While this is a development release, it is tested before being released, principally with the regression test suite (run "make check" to use it). The Savannah website (http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils) contains a current list of known bugs in findutils (for both the stable and development branches). Bugs in GNU findutils should be reported to the findutils bug tracker at http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils. Reporting bugs via the web interface will ensure that you are automatically informed when the bug has been fixed. General discussion of findutils takes place on the bug-findutils mailing list. To join the 'bug-findutils' mailing list, send email to <bug-findutils-requ...@gnu.org>. To verify the GPG signature of the release, you will need the public key of the findutils maintainer, James Youngman. You can download this from http://savannah.gnu.org/users/jay. Please note that the key being used is not the same as the key that was used to sign previous releases. I'd like to thank the following people for their contributions to this release: Andreas Metzler David Gilbert Bernhard Voelker Kamil Dudka Peter Breitenlohner Karl Berry Paul Eggert Benedikt Morbach Dmitry V. Levin Dan "Jidanni" Jacobson * Major changes in release 4.5.12, 2013-09-22 ** Functional Changes to find The GNU extension "find ... -perm /MODE" is no longer disabled when the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set. The obsolete GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE", which was withdrawn in release 4.2.21 in 2005 due to compatibility problems, has been completely removed. Use "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. ** Documentation Changes If you use -type or -xtype with a type letter corresponding to a file type which is not supported by the system on which find was compiled, find will now give a clearer error message (though the functionality is unchanged). Type letters are affected are D, l and p (for Solaris Doors, symbolic links and named pipes respectively). The output of xargs --help has been slightly changed for greater clarity. The documentation for xargs now warns about parallel processes (xargs -P) sharing stdout. The documentation for find -execdir now describes correctly that the command will be executed in the same directory as the file we were considering at the time. The documentation previously (and incorrectly) stated that the original working directory of find would be used. ** Bug Fixes Some bugs in 4.5.11 were fixed without adding them to the bug database, though they are in the ChangeLog: *** Use of [[ ... ]] in find/testsuite/sv-bug-32043.sh *** Don't delete header files in "lib/" for "make clean". *** xargs: wait for process before prompting in interactive mode (-p) These following fixed bugs are recorded at https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils: #40088: potential buffer overflow in -execdir and -okdir #39324: exits without error on OOM #38583: errno-buffer read failed in xargs_do_exec #38474: Unintended (?) behaviour change of -perm +mode predicate #36652: Better document that -0/-d turns off the effect of -E. #34976: find -execdir leaks file descriptors for the working directory -- James Youngman <j...@gnu.org> GNU findutils maintainer
