Coreutils 9.5 arrives with performance improvements, fixes and more

The new version of GNU Coreutils 9.5 has been released , and this release includes new features, bug fixes, and improvements to the various utilities in this software package.

If you're unfamiliar with Coreutils, it's a software package developed by the GNU project that includes a variety of essential basic tools for Unix-like operating systems. These tools include commands such as cat, ls, and rm, among others.

The Coreutils package is a merger of three previous packages: file utilities (fileutils), shell utilities (shellutils), and text processing utilities (textutils). This combination provides a wide range of functionality for file handling, shell interaction, and text processing on Unix systems.

What's new in Coreutils 9.5?

In this new version of GNU Coreutils 9.5 the solution to the critical problem is highlighted in chmod -R affecting security, where an attacker could replace a desired file with an unwanted symbolic link, allowing unauthorized actions on important files.

Improved efficiency and performance in several operations , the cp, mv, install, caty split to improve operations of reading and writing. One of the key improvements has been the increase in the minimum readable or writable block size, from 128 KB to 256 KB. While in the utilities env, killy timeout, added support for unnamed signals

Improvements were implemented in SELinux operations related to file copying , which contributes to better security management in environments where SELinux is present.

In addition to this, it stands out that Improved interoperability with GNU/Linux CIFS file systems en cp, mv, and install, fixing false diagnostics that could have confused users when copying files to these systems.

In Coreutils 9.5 adjustments were made to ls --dired, numfmt, pinky, and wc to align its behavior with user expectations and improve consistency in its use and resolved several issues in split, tail, and wait.

Moreover, base32 y base64 are now more flexible when decoding data without padding and detecting corrupted encodings, in addition to the fact that in the utilitycp --no-clobber y mv -n They now have more intuitive behavior when dealing with existing files on the destination, avoiding unnecessary error outputs and improving the user experience.

Also highlighted are the adjustments that were implemented in the way in which sort handles libcrypto dependencies, reducing initial overhead and improving efficiency in typical use, while wc experienced significant improvements in word count, especially in specific locales.

Other notable changes in this new version include:

• cp --no-preserve=mode now correctly preserves set-group-ID bits in created directories, ensuring that permission settings remain consistent.
• Improvements in join y uniq make these tools better handle multibyte characters, ensuring more accurate behavior when working with multilingual data.
• numfmt now accepts longer suffixes, providing additional flexibility when formatting numbers with units of measurement.
• wc now counts non-printable characters as part of words, improving accuracy when counting file contents.
• chgrp --from=OWNER:GROUP introduces a more specific way to restrict changes to files based on current owners and groups, providing greater control over permissions management.
• cp --keep-directory-symlink y mv --keep-directory-symlink They add the ability to preserve and follow existing symbolic links to directories on the destination, which improves the integrity of the directory structure when moving or copying files.
• Added option «--update=none-fail» to profits cp y mv, similar to "--no-clobber«, but with the particularity that the execution will fail if the files already exist.
• The option -a (--argv0) joined the utility env to override the null parameter from the command line, that is, the path to the executable file.

If you are interested in learning more, you can find the details at the following link.