Announcing the release of GNU findutils 4.5.11

[James Youngman]

I am pleased to announce the release of version 4.5.11 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 <address@hidden>.

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.


* Major changes in release 4.5.11, 2013-02-02

** Documentation Changes

The Texinfo manual and the find manual pafe now explain why two find
binaries (either 'find' and 'oldfind', or 'find' and 'ftsfind') are
installed.  A manual page for either ftsfind or oldfind is also
installed, whichever is appropriate.

** Bug Fixes

#34079: Apply gnulib ftw memory fix

#33384: If rm/chmod etc. are not in /bin or /usr/bin, updatedb fails

#18227: find -ls does not display device major/minor numbers.

#29698: Correct and clarify documentation of xargs -d option

#32887: Present xargs options alphabetically like in GNU cp(1) etc

#14386: updatedb relies on mktemp, which is not portable.

#32043: find -name [ doesn't obey posix

#37926: The -inum predicate previously gave wrong results in oldfind
        (ftsfind, the default find binary, was unaffected).

** Functional Changes to xargs

If no utility is specified, xargs now calls "echo" (and searches on
$PATH to find it) rather than "/bin/echo".  This may give rise to
subtle behaviour differences for some users.   To avoid unexpected
surprises, just explicitly specify the utility you would like to run.
For example use "xargs /bin/echo < foo" rather than "xargs < foo".

A new option is provided, --process-slot-var.  If you set this, xargs
will set the indicated environment variable in each child.  The values
are re-used, but no executing child process will have the same value
as another executing child process.  This wishlist item was Savannah
bug #29512.

** Functional Changes to find

For find -printf, the format specifiers %{, %[ and %( are all now
reserved for future use.  Previously these would print {, [ and (
respectively, but in any case those characters can just be printed
literally like this: find -printf "{[(".  Code changes intended to
explain that these are reserved went into findutils-4.5.5, but this
code had, before now, had no effect.

When expanding "-printf '%F'", find reads /etc/mtab.  We now take the
last match found in this file, rather than the first, to better deal
with implementations which have duplicate entries (for example
/proc/mounts on systems running the Linux kernel).

Both oldfind and ftsfind now use less heap memory when processing
directories containing very many files.  However, oldfind now uses one
file descriptor per recursive subdirectory level, which will further
limit the depth of directory trees it can search.  If you need find to
be able to search deep directory trees, use ftsfind (this is, by
default the binary built and installed as 'find').

The behaviour of the "awk", "posix-awk" and "gnu-awk" regular
expression types selected by the -regextype option have slightly
changed, to bring them into line with the behaviour of the GNU C
library.  For "awk", character classes (such as [[:digit:]]) are now
supported.  For "gnu-awk" and "posix-awk", intervals are supported and
invalid interval specifcations are treated as literals (for example
'a{1' is treated as 'a\{1').

--
James Youngman <address@hidden>
GNU findutils maintainer