148 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
148 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
These are the GNU core utilities. This package is the union of
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the GNU fileutils, sh-utils, and textutils packages.
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Most of these programs have significant advantages over their Unix
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counterparts, such as greater speed, additional options, and fewer
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arbitrary limits.
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The programs that can be built with this package are:
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[ basename cat chgrp chmod chown chroot cksum comm cp csplit cut date dd
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df dir dircolors dirname du echo env expand expr factor false fmt fold
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ginstall groups head hostid hostname id join kill link ln logname ls
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md5sum mkdir mkfifo mknod mv nice nl nohup od paste pathchk pinky pr
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printenv printf ptx pwd readlink rm rmdir seq sha1sum shred sleep sort
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split stat stty su sum sync tac tail tee test touch tr true tsort tty
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uname unexpand uniq unlink uptime users vdir wc who whoami yes
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See the file NEWS for a list of major changes in the current release.
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See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions.
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These programs are intended to conform to POSIX (with BSD and other
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extensions), like the rest of the GNU system. By default they conform
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to older POSIX (1003.2-1992), and therefore support obsolete usages
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like "head -10" and "chown owner.group file". This default is
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overridden at build-time by the value of <unistd.h>'s _POSIX2_VERSION
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macro, and this in turn can be overridden at runtime as described in
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the documentation under "Standards conformance".
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The ls, dir, and vdir commands are all separate executables instead of
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one program that checks argv[0] because people often rename these
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programs to things like gls, gnuls, l, etc. Renaming a program
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file shouldn't affect how it operates, so that people can get the
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behavior they want with whatever name they want.
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Special thanks to Paul Eggert, Brian Matthews, Bruce Evans, Karl Berry,
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Kaveh Ghazi, and François Pinard for help with debugging and porting
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these programs. Many thanks to all of the people who have taken the
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time to submit problem reports and fixes. All contributed changes are
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attributed in the ChangeLog file.
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And thanks to the following people who have provided accounts for
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portability testing on many different types of systems: Bob Proulx,
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Christian Robert, François Pinard, Greg McGary, Harlan Stenn,
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Joel N. Weber, Mark D. Roth, Matt Schalit, Nelson H. F. Beebe,
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Réjean Payette, Sam Tardieu.
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Thanks to Michael Stone for inflicting test releases of the fileutils
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on Debian's unstable distribution, and to all the kind folks who used
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that distribution and found and reported bugs.
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Note that each man page is now automatically generated from a template
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and from the corresponding --help usage message. Patches to the template
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files (man/*.x) are welcome. However, the authoritative documentation
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is in texinfo form in the doc directory.
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If you run the tests on a SunOS4.1.4 system, expect the ctime-part of
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the ls `time-1' test to fail. I believe that is due to a bug in the
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way Sun implemented link(2) and chmod(2).
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***************************************
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Last-minute notes, before coreutils-5.0
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---------------------------------------
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A known problem exists when compiling on HPUX on both hppa and ia64
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in 64-bit mode (i.e. +DD64) on all known HPUX 11.x versions. This
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is not due to a bug in the package but instead due to a bug in the
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system header file which breaks things in 64-bit mode. The default
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compilation mode is 32-bit and the software compiles fine using the
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default mode. To build this software in 64-bit mode you will need
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to fix the system /usr/include/inttypes.h header file. After
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correcting that file the software also compiles fine in 64-bit mode.
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Here is one possible patch to correct the problem.
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--- /usr/include/inttypes.h.orig Thu May 30 01:00:00 1996
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+++ /usr/include/inttypes.h Sun Mar 23 00:20:36 2003
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@@ -489 +489 @@
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-#ifndef __STDC_32_MODE__
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+#ifndef __LP64__
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If you run the tests as root, note that a few of them create files
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and/or run programs as a non-root user, `nobody' by default.
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If you want to use some other non-root username, specify it via
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the NON_ROOT_USERNAME environment variable. Depending on the
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permissions with which the working directories have been created,
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using `nobody' may fail, because that user won't have the required
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read and write access to the build and test directories.
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I find that it is best to unpack and build as a non-privileged
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user, and then to run the following command as that user in order
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to run the privilege-requiring tests:
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sudo env NON_ROOT_USERNAME=$USER make check
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If you can run the tests as root, please do so and report any
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problems. We get much less test coverage in that mode, and it's
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arguably more important that these tools work well when run by
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root than when run by less privileged users.
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***************************************
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There are pretty many tests, but nowhere near as many as we need.
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Additions and corrections are very welcome.
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If you see a problem that you've already reported, feel free to re-report
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it -- it won't bother me to get a reminder. Besides, the more messages I
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get regarding a particular problem the sooner it'll be fixed -- usually.
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If you sent a complete patch and, after a couple weeks you haven't
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received any acknowledgement, please ping us. A complete patch includes
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a well-written ChangeLog entry, unified (diff -u format) diffs relative
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to the most recent test release (or, better, relative to the latest
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sources in the CVS repository), an explanation for why the patch is
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necessary or useful, and if at all possible, enough information to
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reproduce whatever problem prompted it. Plus, you'll earn lots of
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karma if you include a test case to exercise any bug(s) you fix.
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Instructions for checking out the latest source via CVS are here:
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http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group=coreutils
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If your patch adds a new feature, please try to get some sort of consensus
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that it is a worthwhile change. One way to do that is to send mail to
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bug-coreutils@gnu.org including as much description and justification
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as you can. Based on the feedback that generates, you may be able to
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convince us that it's worth adding.
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WARNING: If you modify files like configure.in, m4/*.m4, aclocal.m4,
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or any Makefile.am, then don't be surprised if what gets regenerated no
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longer works. To make things work, you'll have to be using appropriate
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versions of automake and autoconf. As for what versions are `appropriate',
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use the versions of
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* autoconf specified via AC_PREREQ in m4/jm-macros.m4
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* automake specified via AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE in configure.ac
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Usually it's fine to use versions that are newer than those specified.
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These programs all recognize the `--version' option. When reporting
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bugs, please include in the subject line both the package name/version
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and the name of the program for which you found a problem.
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For general documentation on the coding and usage standards
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this distribution follows, see the GNU Coding Standards,
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http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html.
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Mail suggestions and bug reports for these programs to
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the address on the last line of --help output.
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