[ANNOUNCEMENT] Test: grep 3.8 - promotion to current stable

[Thomas Wolff]

Am 28/10/2022 um 10:20 schrieb Corinna Vinschen:
> On Oct 28 10:13, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>> On Oct 28 00:49, Brian Inglis wrote:
>>> On Thu, 27 Oct 2022 18:25:45 +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote
>>>> On Sep 29 12:55, Brian Inglis wrote:
>>>>>> 	/usr/share/doc/grep/ChangeLog
>>>>>> 	https://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=grep.git;a=log;h=refs/tags/v3.8
>>>>>>> The change note below states that egrep and fgrep are deprecated
>>>>>> obsolescent commands, will be dropped in future, and from this release
>>>>>> until then, every use will show a stderr warning message, reminding you
>>>>>> how to change your commands and scripts:
>>>>>>> 	$ egrep ...
>>>>>> 	egrep: warning: egrep is obsolescent; using grep -E
>>>>>> 	...
>>>>>> 	$ fgrep ...
>>>>>> 	fgrep: warning: fgrep is obsolescent; using grep -F
>>>>>> 	...
>>>> Please do everyone a favor and remove those warnings.  egrep and fgrep
>>>> are used abundantly in existing scripts and the user often has no choice
>>>> or no knowledge how to fix this.  If this is an upstream change, it's a
>>>> bad one, breaking backward compatibility.  Please fix this at least for
>>>> our distro.
>>> This was released as test at the start of September, reiterated at the end
>>> of September on this list, then promoted to current stable and announced
>>> early October:
>>>
>>> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2022-09/msg00001.html
>> I was AFK from mid-September until mid-October, so I only niticed this
>> on my return.
>>
>>> I received no feedback to these notices on the announce, cygwin and apps
>>> lists from users, maintainers, or developers.
>>>
>>> This release is in Fedora Rawhide unpatched and targeted for Fedora 38.
>>>
>>> Please note that these warnings are giving notice that egrep and fgrep have
>>> been deprecated as obsolescent for 15 years and will be dropped as commands
>>> as they have never been in POSIX, GREP_COLOR is obsolescent and treated like
>>> GREP_COLORS, unspecified or invalid regular expression warning diagnostics
>>> are now being issued on stderr as they will be treated as errors in future
>>> releases, "binary file matches" messages on stderr may no longer be
>>> suppressed, and invalid bracket expressions are now being treated as errors,
>>> with appropriate diagnostics and exit codes.
>> I'm aware of that, but upstream is obviously missing the fact that
>> egrep and fgrep have been part of the history for so long that they
>> are part of the UNIX gene pool.  As I said there are scripts out
>> there using egrep and fgrep.  I, for one, can easily tweak the
>> scripts, but not every user will be able to do so, missing the
>> knowledge or admin privileges.
>>
>> There are also the old (and I mean old) users out there who have an
>> ingrained habit to use egrep and fgrep since it was *always* part
>> of UNIX.  The warnings are really just a PITA.
> Oh, and the BSDs will very certainly keep egrep and fgrep forever,
> without the dreaded warnings...
>
> I don't even understand why they are so "bad" that they have to be
> removed.  What a weird idea.
I agree so much. People should submit complaint issues upstream, the 
more the better.
It's only not so easy to find a way to submit a Gnu tool bug :(