findutils (4.5.12-1) experimental; urgency=low The GNU extension find -perm +xyz has been deprecated, find now exits with an error when this syntax is used. Please switch over to find -perm /xyz which has been supported since 2005. See http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?38474 for upstream discussion of the issue. -- Andreas Metzler Sat, 28 Sep 2013 08:46:13 +0200 findutils (4.2.31-2) unstable; urgency=low locate is no longer included in the findutils package. It has been split off to a separate package "locate". (There are alternative implementations available, too; see mlocate or slocate.) -- Andreas Metzler Sat, 2 Jun 2007 10:53:46 +0200 findutils (4.2.25-1) unstable; urgency=low The GNU-extension "find -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn in GNU findutils 4.1.22 because it is incompatible with POSIX. The new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" has been introduced instead. Old usages will still continue to work, so long as they do not conflict with POSIX. However a big number of usages _do_ conflict. E.g. -perm +u+x used to be (and -perm /u+x still should be) treated as the mode "u+x", which maps to 0100, then returning true for ALL files that have the u+x bit set regardless of the state of their other bits. Now, per POSIX, +u+x is treated as the valid mode "+u+x" (which is identical to "+u,+x", and again maps to 0111 & 07777). Find therefore returns true on files that are EXACTLY that mode (ie a file that has NO read or write permissions, but all three execute permissions). The ONLY character that can appear in a valid mode but which cannot directly follow '+' according to POSIX is 'a'. So in terms of backwards compatibility, EVERY symbolic mode, except for those starting with a leading 'a', are affected by the change in findutils semantics to be POSIX compliant, [Large parts of this entry are quoted from a comment by Eric Blake in savannah bug #14619] WORKAROUNDS: If you are using find -perm +... you have got the following options: - Use numerical instead of symbolic notation, e.g. "find . -perm +022" instead of "find . -perm +g+w,o+w". Symbolic modes are not affected by this change. - Specify the mode in a different way if possible. e.g. "-perm -u+x" instead of "-perm +u+x". - use the new syntax -perm /... instead of -perm +MODE. If you use this syntax in a Debian package, you'll need to depend on findutils (>= 4.2.25). -- Andreas Metzler Sat, 8 Oct 2005 11:16:45 +0200