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Diffstat (limited to 'TODO')
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@@ -0,0 +1,159 @@ +If you're interested in helping, here are some tasks that we've considered +over the years. Beware: some are quite old and no longer valid. To avoid +wasting your time by duplicating work or by working on a task that is no +longer pertinent, please search the mailing list and post your intent +before embarking on a big project. + +================================================== +Modify chmod so that it does not change an inode's st_ctime + when the selected operation would have no other effect. + First suggested by Hans Ecke <https://hans.ecke.ws> in + https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-coreutils/2004-09/msg00145.html + Discussed more recently on <https://bugs.debian.org/497514>. + +document the following in coreutils.texi: + [ + pinky + +Suggestion from Paul Eggert: + More generally, there's not that much use for imaxtostr nowadays, + since the inttypes module and newer versions of gettext allow things + like _("truncating %s at %" PRIdMAX " bytes") to work portably. + I suspect that (if someone cares to take the time) we can remove + all instances of imaxtostr and umaxtostr in coreutils and gnulib. + +cp --recursive: use fts and *at functions to perform directory traversals + in source and destination hierarchy rather than forming full file names. + The latter (current) approach fails unnecessarily when the names + become very long, and requires space and time that is quadratic in the + depth of the hierarchy. [Bo Borgerson is working on this] + +printf: + Now that gnulib supports *printf("%a"), import one of the + *printf-posix modules so that printf(1) will support %a even on + platforms where the native *printf(3) is deficient. + Suggestion from Eric Blake. + +consider adding some implementation of the "col" utility + Suggested by Karl Berry. + +doc/coreutils.texi: + Address this comment: FIXME: mv's behavior in this case is system-dependent + Better still: fix the code so it's *not* system-dependent. + +ls: add --format=FORMAT option that controls how each line is printed. + +copy.c: Address the FIXME-maybe comment in copy_internal. +And once that's done, add an exclusion so that 'cp --link' +no longer incurs the overhead of saving src. dev/ino and dest. filename +in the hash table. + +Write an autoconf test to work around build failure in HPUX's 64-bit mode. +See notes in README -- and remove them once there's a work-around. + +Integrate use of sendfile, suggested here: + https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-fileutils/2003-03/msg00030.html +I don't plan to do that, since a few tests demonstrate no significant benefit. + +printf: consider adapting builtins/printf.def from bash + +tail: don't use xlseek; it *exits*. + Instead, maybe use a macro and return nonzero. + +tr: support nontrivial equivalence classes, e.g. [=e=] with LC_COLLATE=fr_FR + +lib/strftime.c: Since %N is the only format that we need but that + glibc's strftime doesn't support, consider using a wrapper that + would expand /%(-_)?\d*N/ to the desired string and then pass the + resulting string to glibc's strftime. + +sort: Investigate better sorting algorithms; see Knuth vol. 3. + + We tried list merge sort, but it was about 50% slower than the + recursive algorithm currently used by sortlines, and it used more + comparisons. We're not sure why this was, as the theory suggests it + should do fewer comparisons, so perhaps this should be revisited. + List merge sort was implemented in the style of Knuth algorithm + 5.2.4L, with the optimization suggested by exercise 5.2.4-22. The + test case was 140,213,394 bytes, 426,4424 lines, text taken from the + GCC 3.3 distribution, sort.c compiled with GCC 2.95.4 and running on + Debian 3.0r1 GNU/Linux, 2.4GHz Pentium 4, single pass with no + temporary files and plenty of RAM. + + Since comparisons seem to be the bottleneck, perhaps the best + algorithm to try next should be merge insertion. See Knuth section + 5.3.1, who credits Lester Ford, Jr. and Selmer Johnson, American + Mathematical Monthly 66 (1959), 387-389. + +shred: Update shred as described here to conform to DoD 5220 rules: +https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-coreutils/2007-05/msg00075.html + +Remove suspicious uses of alloca (ones that may allocate more than + about 4k) + +Improve test coverage. + See HACKING for instructions on generating an html test coverage report. + Find a program that has poor coverage and improve. + +Changes expected to go in, someday. +====================================== + + dd patch from Olivier Delhomme + + test/mv/*: clean up $other_partition_tmpdir in all cases + + ls: when both -l and --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir are + specified, consider whether to let the latter select whether to + dereference command line symlinks to directories. Since -l has + an implicit --NO-dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir meaning. + Pointed out by Karl Berry. + + Pending copyright papers: + ------------------------ + getpwnam from Bruce Korb + + pb (progress bar) from Miika Pekkarinen + + ------------------------------ + +Remove long-deprecated options. Search case-insensitive for +'deprecated' and 'remove in '. Automate this. + +Add a distcheck-time test to ensure that every distributed +file is either read-only(indicating generated) or is +version-controlled and up to date. + +remove all uses of the 'register' keyword: Done. add a maint.mk rule + for this, too. + +remove or adjust chown's --changes option, since it + can't always do what it currently says it does. + +Support arbitrary-precision arithmetic in those tools for which it +makes sense. Factor and expr already support this via libgmp. +The "test" program is covered via its string-based comparison of +integers. To be converted: seq. + +Adapt tools like wc, tr, fmt, etc. (most of the textutils) to be + multibyte aware. The problem is that I want to avoid duplicating + significant blocks of logic, yet I also want to incur only minimal + (preferably 'no') cost when operating in single-byte mode. + +pr's use of nstrftime can make it malloc a very large (up to SIZE_MAX) buffer + +----- + +Copyright (C) 2002-2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc. + +This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify +it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by +the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or +(at your option) any later version. + +This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, +but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of +MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the +GNU General Public License for more details. + +You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License +along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. |