Ubuntu
findutils package

findutils shows wrong version number

Bug #1842133 reported by Keith Thompson
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findutils (Ubuntu)
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Bug Description

This problem occurs on Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS (bionic).
It does not occur on Ubuntu 19.04 (disco)

The "find" and "xargs" command are provided by a patched version of the
GNU findutils package. The current version is based on release 4.6.0, but
the "--version" option shows a version number of "4.7.0-git".

As you can see, the "/usr/bin/find" executable is dated Nov 5 2017.
findutils release 4.7.0 was released just yesterday, Aug 29 2017.

Ubuntu 19.04 has findutils 4.6.0+git+20190209-2, and "find --version"
shows "find (GNU findutils) 4.6.0.225-235f".

Expected: "findutils --version" shows a version number based on 4.6.0
Actual: "findutils --version" shows a version number based on 4.7.0,
          which had not yet been released

Demonstration:

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
Release: 18.04
$ apt-cache policy findutils
findutils:
  Installed: 4.6.0+git+20170828-2
  Candidate: 4.6.0+git+20170828-2
  Version table:
 *** 4.6.0+git+20170828-2 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
$ ls -l /usr/bin/find
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 238080 Nov 5 2017 /usr/bin/find
$ /usr/bin/find --version
find (GNU findutils) 4.7.0-git
Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Eric B. Decker, James Youngman, and Kevin Dalley.
Features enabled: D_TYPE O_NOFOLLOW(enabled) LEAF_OPTIMISATION FTS(FTS_CWDFD) CBO(level=2)
$

Tags: bionic
Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)
tags: added: bionic
Revision history for this message
Andreas Metzler (k-launchpad-downhill-at-eu-org) wrote :

First off: Ubuntu/Debian do not ship "patched version of the GNU findutils package [...] based on release 4.6.0". The ship a GIT snapshot. e.g. 4.6.0+git+20170828-2 is upstream GIT as of 2017-08-28. /usr/share/doc/findutils/changelog.Debian.gz even has the full respective GIT revision. (febde26dd0e66dda5d4060fa29b85443ddc6a865.). To clearly show that we are *not* shipping a upstream /release/ we are using a +git version.

The version number upstream GIT snapshots report depends a little bit on the way they are built (git present or not when make dist is invoked, et.al), they might show 4.7.0-git or 4.6.0.235-f254 (That is 4.6.0+git+20190510-2).

Revision history for this message
Keith Thompson (kst) wrote :

> First off: Ubuntu/Debian do not ship "patched version of the GNU findutils
> package [...] based on release 4.6.0".

OK. When I do "apt-get source findutils" I get a "findutils_4.6.0+git+20170828-2.debian.tar.xz"
file that does include two patches, but neither of them seems to be relevant to this issue.

The "findutils_4.6.0+git+20170828.orig.tar.xz" file I get from the same apt-get command
unpacks to a "findutils-4.7.0-gitfindutils-4.7.0-git" directory.

I just built findutils revision febde26dd0e66dda5d4060fa29b85443ddc6a865 from source, and
the resulting "find" command does print "find (GNU findutils) 4.7.0-git" when invoked with
"--version". So it seems to be an upstream issue. "info findutils", which loads
/usr/share/info/find.info.gz, also reports version 4.7.0-git.

Whatever the cause, I suggest that "4.7.0-git" is misleading, since release 4.7.0 did not
yet exist.

I could submit a bug report against the upstream findutils component. Should I do so?

(To be clear, I'm not saying this is a major, or even necessarily significant, problem.)

Revision history for this message
Andreas Metzler (k-launchpad-downhill-at-eu-org) wrote :

> I could submit a bug report against the upstream findutils component. Should I do so?

No please don't, there is no point.

As noted above less old versions in Debian (and Ubuntu) already report a more helpful version string.

Revision history for this message
Keith Thompson (kst) wrote :

I found the upstream fix for this issue.

git://git.sv.gnu.org/findutils :

commit 1cc207f6ebddd3609c995f17756f995cf8847c32
Author: Bernhard Voelker <email address hidden>
Date: 2017-10-30 21:54:19 +0100

    maint: make inter-release --version output more useful

    Now, each snapshot has a version "number" like 4.6-131-219-gda920ee,
    which indicates that it is built using the 131st change set
    (in _some_ repository) following the "v4.6" tag, and that da920ee
    is a prefix of the commit SHA1.

Prior to this commit, "find --version" reported "4.7.0-git".
As of that commit, it reports "4.6.0.157-1cc2"
The very latest as of today reports "4.7.0.12-6975a".

*If* this were to be addressed for Ubuntu 18.04, it could be done
by backporting this patch from upstream. I express no opinion on
whether that would be worth doing.

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