I am pleased to announce the release of version 4.5.3 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. 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. * Major changes in release 4.5.3, 2008-12-07 ** Bug Fixes #24283: find-4.5.2 -printf %TY causes NULL pointer dereference ** Performance changes Changes to gnulib's fts code should provide performance improvements in find when processing very large directories (for example directories containing significantly more than 10000 filenames). Performance imporvements may only exist for some find command lines (performance testing was done for the fts implementation itself but we haven't done the analogous performance tests in find). File type information is also passed back from fts to find, saving calls to the stat system call for find command lines which don't need the stat information. This provides a performance improvement for common cases like "find . -type d". -- James Youngman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> GNU findutils maintainer
