Findutils 4.3.0 is now available on ftp.gnu.org

[James Youngman]

I am pleased to announce the release of version 4.3.0 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/ (but the documentation there
does not include material about changes in the 4.3.x releases).

This is a "stable" development of findutils.  It can be downloaded
from ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/findutils.  

This release includes some significant changes, and so is not yet
ready for production use.  However, I encourage you to try it out.

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 <address@hidden>.

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 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg.  Alternatively, you
could query a PGP keyserver, but you will need to use one that can
cope with subkeys containing photos.  Many older key servers cannot do
this.  I use subkeys.pgp.net.  I think that one works.  See also the
"Downloading" section of http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/.

I would like to thank Jim Meyering for his help in preparing this
release.

* Major changes in release 4.3.0

The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases.  Please
test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
system.  New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
may change or go away.

All other changes in the 4.2.x release series up to and including
findutils-4.2.27 are included in this release.  In addition the
following changes are new in this release:

** Functional Changes

By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
system.  The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
extremely deep directory hierarchites.

You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".

Currently two binaries for 'find' are built.  The configure option
--without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:

                                  With fts      Without fts
default configuration             find          oldfind
configure --with-fts              find          oldfind
configure --without-fts           ftsfind       find

New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable.  These check that a file
can be read, written or executed respectively.

--
James Youngman <address@hidden>
GNU findutils maintainer