This status update (subscribe via RSS) comes about 4 months after the last one, and coincides with release 8.13. Note also the bug tracker with stats which records additions, feature requests and issues.

Rejected ideas

Some of the hardest work on coreutils is knowing what to reject and providing appropriate justification to the contributors. The contributions below all came since the last update and while good ideas, they were not included for various reasons detailed on the mailing list.

• chmod -D to set perms on just directories. The 'X' mode, or `find` with `chmod` was deemed sufficient.
• mkdir --reference to copy permissions. Using umasks and ACLs was deemed sufficient.
• sort -I to sort IP addresses. It's debatable whether this is warranted.
• chroot --before to determine UIDs outside the chroot. This is a bit specialized for inclusion.
• cp --progress. rsync or pv are deemed sufficient.
• mktemp --fifo. This was not deemed warranted.
• uname --distro. lsb_release --id was deemed sufficient.
• cp --reflink-range=src_offset,src_length,dst_offset. The was not deemed warranted.
• date +%f to flush output. `stdbuf -oL date ...` was deemed sufficient.

Additions

Note you can see the latest changes as they're added in the NEWS file (subscribe via RSS).

• split --filter to compress output etc.
• md5sum --strict to exit with error on any checksum mismatch.
• join --check now reports which line the disorder was on.
• rm uses less memory for large directories.
• shuf uses less memory when outputting a small subset.
• date now parses iso-8601 'T' separated dates.
• timeout --foreground to support interactive commands.
• timeout supports subsecond timeouts.

TODO

These items mentioned in the last update are not done yet.

• Integrate fallocate(2) into cp and mv. The interface hasn't been improved, so we'll just use it as is
• posix_fallocate() is still not used due to its dependence on fallocate(2)
• libunistring is now available in debian and fedora and we're about to start using it in coreutils
• integrate Linus' faster sha1sum. Also the much faster SSE sha1sum implementation was mentioned, which although architecture specific, is probably worth including given the ubiquity of the architecture and the performance gain it provides
• support unlimited number of split files
• dd skip_bytes count_bytes to efficiently extract portions of a file
• speed up seq
• sort --range to more efficiently output a subset of the input
• add a NSA/DoD verify function to shred
• More sensible cp --preserve=mode behavior
• Handle ACLs by not using umask
• Add a status=noinfo option to silence dd
• Automatically use more CPU cache efficient buffer sizes in sort
• Possibly integrate the threaded external sort patch
• Add an inplace contrib/ script (or command) to robustly edit files in-place
• uniq --key (like sort --key)
• Add OCFS2 support to cp --reflink
• join should support sort options like -n
• split should have --suffix option
• dd oflag={fsync,BLKFLSBUF}
• cut --blank-separated
• basename -a -s to act as a filter
• shuf --random-range=LO-HI to allow repetition within range
• uniq --group to enhance grouping
• csplit --suppress-matched to exclude delimiter lines from the output files
• support SEEK_DATA/SEEK_HOLE in ZFS and elsewhere to efficiently copy sparse files

Also new items cropped up since the last update.

• Add a `chid` tool to easily drop privileges
• chmod --parents to update permission on a full path
• wc -b -M to output frequencies of characters
• PAM support for su
• multiarch support in stdbuf
• rename might be a candidate for coreutils
• split --numeric-suffixes=1 to make starting number configurable
• --noatime support to various recursive traversal tools
• increase IO block size from 32 to 64K. cat, cp etc may benefit from this
• dd conv=sparse like FreeBSD to generate file with holes
• printf %{human} to abbreviate numbers to 5M 4G etc.