Subject: fileutils can now replace perforate...

From: Mark Eichin <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Jul 1996 17:49:15 -0400

This came up a while back, in a discussion of creating sparse
files.  Perforate is probably still a win if it operates in place
(does it? I haven't really looked) but cp now has:

* cp has a new option to control creation of sparse files:
  --sparse={auto,always,never}.  --sparse=auto is the default.

							_Mark_

------- Start of forwarded message -------
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked]
Subject: ANNOUNCE: GNU file utilities 3.13 released
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 18:40:35 -0500
From: Jim Meyering <[email-masked]>
Newsgroups: gnu.announce,gnu.utils.bug,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.unix.misc,comp.software-eng
Followup-To: gnu.utils.bug

A new release of the GNU file management utilities is available at

  ftp://ftp.gnu.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/fileutils-3.13.tar.gz.

This is mostly a bug-fix release.

The programs in the fileutils are:

chgrp chmod chown cp dd df dir dircolors du install ln ls mkdir
mkfifo mknod mv rm rmdir touch sync vdir

Most of these programs have significant advantages over their Unix
counterparts, such as greater speed, additional options, and fewer
arbitrary limits.

Changes in release 3.13
* ls properly determines window size on SunOS and Solaris systems
* ls accepts new option --color[=WHEN] where WHEN is `always', `never',
  or `auto'.  --color=never is the default.  --color is equivalent
  to --color=always.
* new program: dircolors
* ls allows 0 as argument to --tabsize (-T) option.  Using --tabsize=0
  inhibits the use of TAB characters for separating columns.
* you can create a backup of FILE with cp --force --backup FILE FILE.  Before,
  that command failed saying that ``FILE' and `FILE' are the same file'.
* uses automake-generated Makefile templates
* chown and chgrp accept new option --no-dereference (-h)
* ln -f FILE FILE fails with a diagnostic rather than silently removing FILE
* when building on systems that have getopt_long (like Linux), the system-
  provided function will be used -- so executables may be a little smaller
* cp -p, and mv modify owner and/or group of symlinks on systems
  (like Solaris) that provide the lchown system call.
* df no longer invokes the sync system call by default.  You can use the
  --sync option to make df invoke sync before getting file system sizes.
* internationalized diagnostic messages
* mkdir accepts new option: --verbose
* `cp file D/' uses the full file name `D/file' instead of `D//file'.
* cp --backup a~ a fails instead of silently destroying the source file
* df and du have new options --human-readable (-h) and --megabytes (-m).
* install now honors --backup (-b), --suffix=SUFFIX (-S SUFFIX), and
  --version-control=WORD (-V WORD) options just as cp, ln, and mv do.
* ln --verbose output is less prone to misinterpretation
* ls -o works like -lG;  for compatibility with other versions of ls
* cp has a new option to control creation of sparse files:
  --sparse={auto,always,never}.  --sparse=auto is the default.
* rm -rf '' behaves properly on SunOS 4 systems
* touch: rename long option name, --file, to --reference.
  `touch --file' will continue to work a little longer.
* df fails if the same file system type is both selected and excluded.
* df works around SunOS statfs brokenness wrt filesystems larger than 2GB
* df better handles inconsistent mtab entries
* `ls -lDR dir dir2' works
* `ls -c' does what it's supposed to
* all programs include program name in --version output
* `ls --quote-name' works
* mv properly determines whether src and dest are the same file
  Before, it could (though with very low probability) fail to do the move,
  reporting that distinct source and destination are the same file.
* du --dereference (-L) works with directory symlinks
* du works on SunOS 4 systems even when accounting is enabled
* many programs that convert strings to integers now use strtol or strtoul
  and detect overflow

Here's the md5 checksum for the distribution.  It was generated
using the md5sum program that is part of the textutils package.
You can check it by saving this message to a file, say tu-announce
and then running md5sum -c tu-announce.

0e9c7b0915f5e2dc887d2f646e2dd9a8  fileutils-3.13.tar.gz

Please send bug reports for this software to the mailing list
	[email-masked]

[ Most GNU software is packed using the GNU `gzip' compression program.
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---

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 96 01:46 BST

>   --sparse={auto,always,never}.  --sparse=auto is the default.

But --sparse=auto is impossible to implement correctly on many
systems, and filesystem-dependent on others !

Ian.