Re: PATCH] coreutils: Upgrade 9.11 -> 9.12

[Collin Funk <collin.funk1@gmail.com>]

Hi Leon,

Leon Anavi wrote:

> Upgrade to release 9.12. Drop backported patches that are now part
> of this release. Notable changes include:
> 
> - env supports a new --env0-from=FILE option to support
>   full persistence and restoration of the environment.
>   This also supports e.g. filtering like:
>     env -i --env0-from=<( env -0 | sed -z ... )
> 
> - Commands now have safer terminal output,
>   avoiding confusing output or corrupted terminal state.
> 
> - Commands that traverse directories no longer
>   fail merely if files are being removed in parallel.
> 
> - ptx has improved robustness, avoiding potential infinite loops.
> 
> - tee fixes robustness issues introduced in the previous release,
>   where it could go into an infinite loop or incorrectly error
>   in the presence of short writes.
> 
> - stty is more accepting of variations in requested speed.
> 
> - sort(1) will now better use available memory
>   and parallel operation when reading from pipes.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Leon Anavi <leon.anavi@konsulko.com>

For context, I co-maintain GNU coreutils. In coreutils-9.12, we added
quoting to 'env' and 'printenv'. A large part of the rationale was
improved robustness, avoiding applications getting confused with
environment variables that may have newlines or other strange
characters. Here is the old behavior:

    $ env -i ENV='hello'$'\n''FAKE_ENV=goodbye' env
    ENV=hello
    FAKE_ENV=goodbye

Here is the new behavior, making it clear that FAKE_ENV is not an
environment variable:

    $ env -i ENV='hello'$'\n''FAKE_ENV=goodbye' ~/.local/bin/env
    ENV='hello'$'\n''FAKE_ENV=goodbye'

However, this caused some issues that we did not foresee from our
scanning of Debian Code Search [1] [2].

I suggest applying the patch that we committed quickly after the
release, which does not quote when standard output is not a terminal
[3].

Collin

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2026-09/msg00061.html
[2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2026-09/msg00062.html
[3] https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/commit/782a1e5bc2090212273bb731dceee2cc2a071e54