Can anybody tell me how I can look at the official change history of
linux commands?

For example, the test(1) command used to have a regular-expression
parser built in.  No longer, and more surprising, there's no discussion
of its disappearance on the internet; that I can find, at any rate.

I'd to know when it disappeared and what discussions, by whom, preceded
that.

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On 10/7/22 8:25 AM, n952162 wrote:

Can anybody tell me how I can look at the official change history of
linux commands?

Some man pages have history of commands in them.

Admittedly, it seems as if man pages on Solaris and *BSD (I have access
to FreeBSD) tend to be better than Linux man page at this aspect.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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On 2022-10-07 17:25+0200 n952162 <n952162@web.de> wrote:

Am 07.10.22 um 16:56 schrieb Grant Taylor:

On 10/7/22 8:25 AM, n952162 wrote:

Can anybody tell me how I can look at the official change history
of linux commands?

Some man pages have history of commands in them.

Admittedly, it seems as if man pages on Solaris and *BSD (I have
access to FreeBSD) tend to be better than Linux man page at this
aspect.

Well, the man page, yes, would be a good indicator, but the commands themselves?

Where does gentoo get the source to build  test(1) or expr(1) or date(1)?    That's in some package, but where is the upstream source? 
Is it something in github?  Or a linux portal?  Or Torvalds private server?  Or the gnu server?

/usr/bin/test[1] was installed by sys-apps/coreutils[2], it's homepage
is <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>[3], that links to the
source code repository.

Other ways to find out:
- `equery meta sys-apps/coreutils`
- `less $(portageq get_repo_path / gentoo)/sys-apps/coreutils/coreutils-8.32-r1.ebuild`

Kind regards, tastytea

[1] `whereis test`
[2] `qfile /usr/bin/test` or `equery belongs /usr/bin/test`
[3] `eix sys-apps/coreutils` or emerge -s sys-apps/coreutils`

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On Fri, 2022-10-07 at 17:47 +0200, tastytea wrote:

/usr/bin/test was installed by sys-apps/coreutils

If you're using bash, the "test" command is actually built-in to the
shell to avoid forking a million processes in every shell script.

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Am 07.10.22 um 16:56 schrieb Grant Taylor:

On 10/7/22 8:25 AM, n952162 wrote:

Can anybody tell me how I can look at the official change history of
linux commands?

Some man pages have history of commands in them.

Admittedly, it seems as if man pages on Solaris and *BSD (I have
access to FreeBSD) tend to be better than Linux man page at this aspect.

Well, the man page, yes, would be a good indicator, but the commands themselves?

Where does gentoo get the source to build  test(1) or expr(1) or date(1)?    That's in some package, but where is the upstream source? 
Is it something in github?  Or a linux portal?  Or Torvalds private
server?  Or the gnu server?

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Am 07.10.22 um 17:47 schrieb tastytea:

On 2022-10-07 17:25+0200 n952162 <n952162@web.de> wrote:

Am 07.10.22 um 16:56 schrieb Grant Taylor:

On 10/7/22 8:25 AM, n952162 wrote:

Can anybody tell me how I can look at the official change history
of linux commands?

Some man pages have history of commands in them.

Admittedly, it seems as if man pages on Solaris and *BSD (I have
access to FreeBSD) tend to be better than Linux man page at this
aspect.

Well, the man page, yes, would be a good indicator, but the commands
themselves?

Where does gentoo get the source to build  test(1) or expr(1) or
date(1)?    That's in some package, but where is the upstream source?
Is it something in github?  Or a linux portal?  Or Torvalds private
server?  Or the gnu server?

/usr/bin/test[1] was installed by sys-apps/coreutils[2], it's homepage
is <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>[3], that links to the
source code repository.

Other ways to find out:
- `equery meta sys-apps/coreutils`
- `less $(portageq get_repo_path / gentoo)/sys-apps/coreutils/coreutils-8.32-r1.ebuild`

Kind regards, tastytea

[1] `whereis test`
[2] `qfile /usr/bin/test` or `equery belongs /usr/bin/test`
[3] `eix sys-apps/coreutils` or emerge -s sys-apps/coreutils`

Oh, that's good.  Thank you.

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On 10/7/22 10:31 AM, Matt Connell wrote:

Ashamed to admit I learned of equery meta today. I'd previously been
relying on eix to find, say, the website associated with a package.

NEVER be ashamed to admit that you learned something.

Learning is a good thing.

It doesn't matter when you learn it as long as you do learn.

I think that being ashamed about not knowing something tends to promote
what I consider to be a negative stigmata that people should know
everything and that they should hide what they don't know.

I've been administering Linux professionally for more than two decades
and I still learn new things weekly if not daily.

Help pull others up, don't hold them down by climbing on top of them.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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On Fri, 2022-10-07 at 17:47 +0200, tastytea wrote:

equery meta

Ashamed to admit I learned of equery meta today. I'd previously been
relying on eix to find, say, the website associated with a package.

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On 10/7/22 8:25 AM, n952162 wrote:

Can anybody tell me how I can look at the official change history
of linux commands ?

There's the Wayback Machine, which tries to archive all I/net pages ever.
I've never used it, but it should have copies of man pages going back,
which would allow you to reconstruct the history of the commands.

--
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb
ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT `-O----------O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

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On 10/7/22 10:23 AM, Philip Webb wrote:

There's the Wayback Machine, which tries to archive all I/net pages ever.

Sadly, there are a lot of pages that the Wayback Machine a.k.a. The
Internet Archive doesn't have archived. TIA / WM is a best effort
system and is a lot better than not having anything at all.

I've never used it, but it should have copies of man pages going back,
which would allow you to reconstruct the history of the commands.

I don't think that searching the internet for old copies of man pages is
going to be as productive as one might hope. First there's the SysV vs
BSD lineage to account for. Second there's all the other things that
don't fall in the SysV / BSD camps, mostly older.

I'd suggest inquiring on the TUHS or COFF mailing lists for pointers to
history of various commands. You may very well be pointed to archived
man pages. But you'll also have comments from people who maintained
commands and possibly added the option that you're most interested in.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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On Fri, 2022-10-07 at 11:04 -0600, Grant Taylor wrote:

I think that being ashamed about not knowing something tends to promote
what I consider to be a negative stigmata that people should know
everything and that they should hide what they don't know.

Was more just laughing at myself for having used equery so frequently
for ~10 years and not knowing about the option.

And if I was hiding it, I wouldn't have publicly replied that I learned
it :)

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On 10/7/22 11:10 AM, Matt Connell wrote:

Was more just laughing at myself for having used equery so frequently
for ~10 years and not knowing about the option.

Fair enough.

And if I was hiding it, I wouldn't have publicly replied that I
learned it :)

TIL

You accidentally struck a button for me. As the ... more experienced SA
on teams for a while, I tend to not tolerate people hording / not
sharing information and / or making fun of others for not knowing
something. So I counter this by actively promoting people learning
things as a good thing.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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Matt Connell wrote:

On Fri, 2022-10-07 at 17:47 +0200, tastytea wrote:

equery meta

Ashamed to admit I learned of equery meta today. I'd previously been
relying on eix to find, say, the website associated with a package.

I just checked that out and it is nifty.  Now to remember the option
next time I need it.  :/  You were not alone in missing that option.  I
had no idea it was there either.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

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On Fri, 7 Oct 2022 17:47:51 +0200
tastytea <gentoo@tastytea.de> wrote:

On 2022-10-07 17:25+0200 n952162 <n952162@web.de> wrote:

Am 07.10.22 um 16:56 schrieb Grant Taylor:

On 10/7/22 8:25 AM, n952162 wrote:

Can anybody tell me how I can look at the official change history
of linux commands?

Some man pages have history of commands in them.

Admittedly, it seems as if man pages on Solaris and *BSD (I have
access to FreeBSD) tend to be better than Linux man page at this
aspect.

Well, the man page, yes, would be a good indicator, but the commands themselves?

Where does gentoo get the source to build  test(1) or expr(1) or date(1)?    That's in some package, but where is the upstream
source? Is it something in github?  Or a linux portal?  Or Torvalds private server?  Or the gnu server?

/usr/bin/test[1] was installed by sys-apps/coreutils[2], it's homepage
is <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>[3], that links to the
source code repository.

For me the first and most obvious place to look at is /usr/share/doc/<package>/. Usually there is NEWS or ChangeLog file or
both. Which <package> it is you can get from man page (it is written
at the end in the "footer") or with command

$ equery belongs `which <command>`.


--
Róbert Čerňanský
E-mail: openhs@tightmail.com

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