sed: suggestions for sed release-management

[Michael Prokop]

Hi!

[Please Cc me on replies as I'm not subscribed to bug-gnu-utils, thanks.]

While stumbling upon the 'editing files in-place destroys symlinks'
behaviour of GNU sed's -i option I noticed some stuff I think would
be worth improving.

1) Quoting http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/sed.html#Reporting-Bugs

| Email bug reports to address@hidden

That's not optimal because it dramatically raises the truck factor
and bugreports might be lost in a single mailbox. Instead please
point to an appropriate mailing list.

2) The GNU sed homepage: starting at http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/
you'll be pointed to http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/sed.html
But none of these webpages directly provide the information where
GNU sed can be downloaded nor where current development takes place
at all. I also can't find any online available changelogs.

3) The online documentation at
http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/sed.html#index-g_t_002d_002dfollow_002dsymlinks-28
says:

,---- [ quoting ]
| --follow-symlinks
|
| This option is available only on platforms that support symbolic
| links and has an effect only if option -i is specified. In this
| case, if the file that is specified on the command line is a
| symbolic link, sed will follow the link and edit the ultimate
| destination of the link. The default behavior is to break the
| symbolic link, so that the link destination will not be modified.
`----

But this option doesn't seem to be available in *any* official
releases yet. Please provide information in the docs since when a
specific option is available.

4) The manpage should mention the symlink problem regarding '-i'.
Whereas the *info*page at least says:

,---- [ info sed / --in-place...]
| This option specifies that files are to be edited in-place. GNU sed
| does this by creating a temporary file and sending output to this
| file rather than to the standard output
`----

... the manpage contains just "edit files in place (makes backup if
extension supplied)". Please make the manpage a bit more verbose
regarding this issue. And while we are at it please mention the
"--follow-symlinks" option in the "--in-place" paragraph as well.

5) Releases. The last stable release is sed-4.1.5 from 2006-02-03.
That's more than 3 years ago. Please consider providing new stable
releases more regularly. If you think it's not "stable as in stable"
yet these days, than providing release candidates might be an option.

thanks && regards,
-mika-

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