Subject: bug#25259: closed (Re: bug#25259: gnu tools conform to ?? older posix?)

From: [email-masked] (GNU bug Tracking System)
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2016 23:06:02 +0000

Your bug report

#25259: gnu tools conform to ?? older posix?

which was filed against the coreutils package, has been closed.

The explanation is attached below, along with your original report.
If you require more details, please reply to [email-masked].

-- 
25259: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=25259
GNU Bug Tracking System
Contact [email-masked] with problems

Subject: Re: bug#25259: gnu tools conform to ?? older posix?
From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
To: "L. A. Walsh" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2016 15:05:39 -0800
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

L. A. Walsh wrote:
> I don't think the above is correct w/r/t "rm" with its previous
> functionality removed to enforce compliance with the latest POSIX
> (not the 1992 POSIX).

Yes, that part of README is obsolete. I installed the attached to fix that and 
am closing this bug report. Although my impression is that you also want 'rm' to 
be changed, that would be a topic for a different bug report.
>From 6a5f2e9940090b61bdc7c2b0600edc25579889f4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2016 15:02:34 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] doc: Update POSIX part of README (Bug#25259)

---
 README | 10 ++++------
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/README b/README
index 1dea908..3910255 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -23,12 +23,10 @@ If you obtained this file as part of a "git clone", then see the
 README-hacking file.  If this file came to you as part of a tar archive,
 then see the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions.
 
-These programs are intended to conform to POSIX (with BSD and other
-extensions), like the rest of the GNU system.  By default they conform
-to older POSIX (1003.2-1992), and therefore support obsolete usages
-like "head -10" and "chown owner.group file".  This default is
-overridden at build-time by the value of <unistd.h>'s _POSIX2_VERSION
-macro, and this in turn can be overridden at runtime as described in
+Like the rest of the GNU system, these programs mostly conform to
+POSIX, with BSD and other extensions.  For closer conformance, or
+conformance to a particular POSIX version, set the POSIXLY_CORRECT
+and the _POSIX2_VERSION environment variables, as described in
 the documentation under "Standards conformance".
 
 The ls, dir, and vdir commands are all separate executables instead of
-- 
2.7.4

Subject: gnu tools conform to ?? older posix?
From: "L. A. Walsh" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2016 01:39:42 -0800
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

In the 8.26 NEWS file, I found this paragraph:

  These programs are intended to conform to POSIX (with BSD and other
  extensions), like the rest of the GNU system.  By default they conform
  to older POSIX (1003.2-1992), and therefore support obsolete usages
  like "head -10" and "chown owner.group file".  This default is
  overridden at build-time by ... and in turn can be overridden
  at runtime ...

----

I don't think the above is correct w/r/t "rm" with its previous
functionality removed to enforce compliance with the latest POSIX
(not the 1992 POSIX).

I'm pretty sure that the 1992 version of POSIX didn't override
the historical design and behavior of "rm" by disabling
the "depth-first" removal of files if you specified "DIRNAME/.",
and generating an error message at the end (suppressible with
the "-f" switch).

As GNU utils strive for compliance w/the older POSIX standard,
I would like for rm's functionality to be restored. 

In order to make it more useful, I ask that the --one-file-system
switch have a short-form, "-x", to indicate negation of crossing
file-system boundaries.

Thanks & Cheers!
  :-) Linda