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

[Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca>]

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

and these issues were SlashDotted then:

https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/09/05/0135254/gnu-grep-38-starts-issuing-warnings-about-using-egrep-and-fgrep

https://inbox.sourceware.org/cygwin-announce/20220904140803.17862-1-Brian.Inglis@SystematicSW.ab.ca/

https://inbox.sourceware.org/cygwin-apps/021f494d-dac8-12b2-b49d-7bf6d56068a4@SystematicSw.ab.ca/

https://inbox.sourceware.org/cygwin-announce/20221002155559.36122-1-Brian.Inglis@SystematicSW.ab.ca/

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 will not be suprised if Paul enforces these changes in the next release, in 
about a year.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis			Calgary, Alberta, Canada

La perfection est atteinte			Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter	not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer	but when there is no more to cut
			-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry