Announcing the release of GNU findutils 4.5.12

[James Youngman]

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 <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.

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 -perm +MODE", which was withdrawn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 <address@hidden>
GNU findutils maintainer