GNU diff utilities - News: diffutils-3.8 released [stable]

diffutils-3.8 released [stable]

Item posted by Jim Meyering <meyering> on Mon 02 Aug 2021 02:14:08 AM UTC.

This is to announce diffutils-3.8, a stable release.

There have been 47 commits by 5 people in the 2.6 years since 3.7.

See the NEWS below for a brief summary.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
The following people contributed changes to this release:

  Bruno Haible (2)
  Dave Odell (1)
  Jim Meyering (23)
  KO Myung-Hun (1)
  Paul Eggert (20)

Jim [on behalf of the diffutils maintainers]
==================================================================

Here is the GNU diffutils home page:
    http://gnu.org/s/diffutils/

For a summary of changes and contributors, see:
  http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=diffutils.git;a=shortlog;h=v3.8
or run this command from a git-cloned diffutils directory:
  git shortlog v3.7..v3.8

To summarize the 2453 gnulib-related changes, run these commands
from a git-cloned diffutils directory:
  git checkout v3.8
  git submodule summary v3.7

Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature[*]:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-3.8.tar.xz
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-3.8.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/diffutils/diffutils-3.8.tar.xz
  https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/diffutils/diffutils-3.8.tar.xz.sig

[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify diffutils-3.8.tar.xz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 7FD9FCCB000BEEEE

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.71
  Automake 1.16d
  Gnulib v0.1-4758-gb48905892

NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 3.8 (2021-08-01) [stable]

** Incompatible changes

  diff no longer treats a closed stdin as representing an absent file
  in usage like 'diff --new-file - foo <&-'.  This feature was rarely
  if ever used and was not portable to POSIX platforms that reopen
  stdin on exec, such as SELinux if the process underwent an AT_SECURE
  transition, or HP-UX even if not setuid.
  [bug#33965 introduced in 2.8]

** Bug fixes

  diff and related programs no longer get confused if stdin, stdout,
  or stderr are closed.  Previously, they sometimes opened files into
  file descriptors 0, 1, or 2 and then mistakenly did I/O with them
  that was intended for stdin, stdout, or stderr.
  [bug#33965 present since "the beginning"]

  cmp, diff and sdiff no longer treat negative command-line
  option-arguments as if they were large positive numbers.
  [bug#35256 introduced in 2.8]