coreutils/README

These are the GNU core utilities.  This package is the union of
the GNU fileutils, sh-utils, and textutils packages.

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

The programs that can be built with this package are:

  basename cat chgrp chmod chown chroot cksum comm cp csplit cut date dd
  df dir dircolors dirname du echo env expand expr factor false fmt fold
  ginstall groups head hostid hostname id join kill link ln logname ls
  md5sum mkdir mkfifo mknod mv nice nl nohup od paste pathchk pinky pr
  printenv printf ptx pwd rm rmdir seq sha1sum shred sleep sort split
  stat stty su sum sync tac tail tee test touch tr true tsort tty uname
  unexpand uniq unlink uptime users vdir wc who whoami yes

See the file NEWS for a list of major changes in the current release.

See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions.

These programs are intended to be POSIX.2 compliant (with BSD and other
extensions), like the rest of the GNU system.

The ls, dir, and vdir commands are all separate executables instead of
one program that checks argv[0] because people often rename these
programs to things like gls, gnuls, l, etc.  Renaming a program
file shouldn't affect how it operates, so that people can get the
behavior they want with whatever name they want.

Special thanks to Paul Eggert, Brian Matthews, Bruce Evans, Karl Berry,
Kaveh Ghazi, and Fran<61>ois Pinard for help with debugging and porting
these programs.  Many thanks to all of the people who have taken the
time to submit problem reports and fixes.  All contributed changes are
attributed in the ChangeLog file.

And thanks to the following people who have provided accounts for
portability testing on many different types of systems: Bob Proulx,
Christian Robert, Fran<61>ois Pinard, Greg McGary, Harlan Stenn,
Joel N. Weber, Mark D. Roth, Matt Schalit, Nelson H. F. Beebe,
R<EFBFBD>jean Payette, Sam Tardieu.

Thanks to Michael Stone for inflicting test releases of the fileutils
on Debian's unstable distribution, and to all the kind folks who used
that distribution and found and reported bugs.

Note that each man page is now automatically generated from a template
and from the corresponding --help usage message.  Patches to the template
files (man/*.x) are welcome.  However, the authoritative documentation
is in texinfo form in the doc directory.

If you run the tests on a SunOS4.1.4 system, expect the ctime-part of
the ls `time-1' test to fail.  I believe that is due to a bug in the
way Sun implemented link(2) and chmod(2).

There are pretty many tests, but nowhere near as many as we need.
Additions and corrections are very welcome.

If you see a problem that you've already reported, feel free to re-report
it -- it won't bother me to get a reminder.  Besides, the more messages
I get regarding a particular problem the sooner it'll be fixed --
usually.  If you sent a complete patch and, after a couple weeks you
haven't received any acknowledgement please ping us.  A complete patch
includes a well-written ChangeLog entry, unified (diff -u format) diffs,
an explanation for why the patch is necessary or useful, and if at all
possible, enough information to reproduce whatever problem prompted it.

If your patch adds a new feature, please try to get some sort of consensus
that it is a worthwhile change.  One way to do that is to send mail to
bug-gnu-utils@gnu.org (aka the gnu.utils.bug news group) including as
much description and justification as you can.  Based on the feedback
that generates, you may be able to convince us that it's worth adding.


WARNING:  If you modify files like configure.in, m4/*.m4, aclocal.m4,
or any Makefile.am, then don't be surprised if what gets regenerated no
longer works.  To make things work, you'll have to be using appropriate
versions of automake and autoconf.  As for what versions are `appropriate',
use the versions of

  * autoconf specified via AC_PREREQ in m4/jm-macros.m4
  * automake specified via AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE in configure.ac

Usually it's fine to use versions that are newer than those specified.

These programs all recognize the `--version' option.  When reporting
bugs, please include in the subject line both the package name/version
and the name of the program for which you found a problem.

For general documentation on the coding and usage standards
this distribution follows, see the GNU Coding Standards,
http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html.

Mail suggestions and bug reports for these programs to
the address on the last line of --help output.