coreutils-8.1 released [stable]

[Jim Meyering]

This is to announce coreutils-8.1.
We consider it to be "stable" in spite of a few new features,
a new program and minor changes in behavior.

    <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>

Eric Blake deserves special thanks for making an impressive number of
improvements to the portability and robustness of the tools, both via
new and even better interfaces in Gnulib and changes in Coreutils proper.
Thanks to everyone else who has been contributing, helping to manage
the mailing list and reporting bugs.

For a summary of changes and contributors, see:
  http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=shortlog;h=v8.1
or run this command from a git-cloned coreutils directory:
  git shortlog v8.0..v8.1

To summarize the gnulib-related changes, run these commands
From a git-cloned coreutils directory:
  git checkout v8.1
  git submodule summary v8.0

Here are the compressed sources:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.1.tar.gz   (10 MB)
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.1.tar.xz   (4.2 MB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.1.tar.gz.sig
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.1.tar.xz.sig

[*] You can use either of the above signature files to verify that
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This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.64.85-1962
  Automake 1.11a
  Gnulib v0.0-2893-g0883405
  Bison 2.4.1.160-aa01

NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]

** Bug fixes

  chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
  Even then, chcon may still be useful.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]

  chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
  and arrange to exit nonzero.  Before, they would silently ignore the
  offending directory and all "contents."

  env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
  environment.  Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
  name.  [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]

  ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly.  Previously
  files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
  without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]

  md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
  processes will not intersperse their output.
  This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
  [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]

  mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
  output the name of the file to stdout.
  [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]

  nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
  call fails with errno == EACCES.
  [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]

  nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
  they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
  message to stderr.

  stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
  btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
  nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs

  tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
  Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
  read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
  initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
  were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
  [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]

  tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
  replaced via renaming.  That operation provokes either of two sequences
  of inotify events.  The less common sequence is now handled as well.
  [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]

  timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
  for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].

** Changes in behavior

  chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
  internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
  is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
  with the invoked command failing with status 1.  Likewise, nohup
  fails with status 125 instead of 127.

  du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
  directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
  during a traversal.  Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
  usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.

  echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).

  rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
  on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
  Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
  Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
  than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.

** New programs

  nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.

** New features

  env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
  avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.

  md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
  So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.

  mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
  after the substitution in the template.  Additionally, uses such as
  "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.

  touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
  change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.

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