address@hidden: Bug#80541: [Patch] GNU tail does now support option -F/--follow-forever]

[Herbert Xu]

Full details are available at
        http://bugs.debian.org/80541

In that thread, Christian Kurz also noted that FreeBSD's tail already
supports a -F option whose behaviour is almost identical to this proposed
option.  The same is true in NetBSD.
-- 
Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 is out! ( http://www.debian.org/ )
Email:  Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <address@hidden>
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt
> --- Begin Message ---
>
>
>
> Subject: 
>
> Bug#80541: [Patch] GNU tail does now support option -F/--follow-forever
>
>
>
>
> Date: 
>
> Tue, 26 Dec 2000 17:45:49 +0100
>
>
>
>
> Package: textutils
> Version: 2.0-3
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Hi,
>
> after the discussion on debian-devel about the behaviour of tail to endlessly
> tail a logfile, Ethan Benson told me about the options --follow=name and
> --retry to get this behaviour. As I'm a bit lazy and don't want to type this
> long options regulary, I created a patch for tail to support -F and
> --follow-forever to generate this behaviour. You will find this patch at the
> end of the mail. I hope that you include it in our tail and send it also to the
> upstream maintainers. Thanks.
>
> Christian
>
> -- System Information
> Debian Release: woody
> Architecture: i386
> Kernel: Linux seteuid 2.4.0-test9 #1 Sun Oct 29 18:10:04 CET 2000 i586
>
> Versions of packages textutils depends on:
> ii  libc6                         2.2-6      GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
>
> -- Patch:
> diff -uNr textutils-2.0.old/src/tail.c textutils-2.0/src/tail.c
> --- textutils-2.0.old/src/tail.c        Thu Aug  5 16:38:02 1999
> +++ textutils-2.0/src/tail.c    Tue Dec 26 17:33:25 2000
> @@ -187,6 +187,7 @@
>    {"allow-missing", no_argument, NULL, CHAR_MAX + 1},
>    {"bytes", required_argument, NULL, 'c'},
>    {"follow", optional_argument, NULL, 'f'},
> +  {"follow-forever", optional_argument, NULL, 'F'},
>    {"lines", required_argument, NULL, 'n'},
>    {"max-unchanged-stats", required_argument, NULL, CHAR_MAX + 2},
>    {"max-consecutive-size-changes", required_argument, NULL, CHAR_MAX + 3},
> @@ -1311,7 +1312,7 @@
>    count_lines = 1;
>    forever = from_start = print_headers = 0;
>  
> -  while ((c = getopt_long (argc, argv, "c:n:f::qs:v", long_options, NULL))
> +  while ((c = getopt_long (argc, argv, "c:n:f:F::qs:v", long_options, NULL))
>          != -1)
>      {
>        switch (c)
> @@ -1357,6 +1358,11 @@
>             follow_mode = XARGMATCH ("--follow", optarg,
>                                      follow_mode_string, follow_mode_map);
>           break;
> +       
> +       case 'F':
> +         forever = 1;
> +         follow_mode = Follow_name;
> +         reopen_inaccessible_files =1;
>  
>         case CHAR_MAX + 1:
>           reopen_inaccessible_files = 1;
>
>
> --- End Message ---