time-1.8 changes license and output
After many years a new 1.8 version of "time" tool was released. This
version brings some noticable changes:
(1) License changed from (GPLv2+) to (GPLv3+ and GFDL).
(2) Additional exit codes are used to report meassured command failures
and failures to execute the command.
(3) A meassured command failure is printed by default. See the first line:
$ ./time-1.8/time /usr/bin/false
Command exited with non-zero status 1
0.00user 0.00system 0:00.00elapsed 100%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 1196maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+55minor)pagefaults 0swaps
You can suppress the message by "-q" option:
$ ./time-1.8/time -q /usr/bin/false
0.00user 0.00system 0:00.00elapsed 100%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 1268maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+55minor)pagefaults 0swaps
I consider the last change quite significant. Vanilla time used to print
the failure message uncoditionally, but Fedora patched it to be visible
only if "-v" option was specified. But 1.8 started to control the
message by "-q" option. To follow the upstream, I dropped the patch.
This of course revealed that the failure message is printed by default
even in POSIX mode ("-p" option) now:
$ ./time-1.8/time -p /usr/bin/false
Command exited with non-zero status 1
real 0.00
user 0.00
sys 0.00
I think this is a bug and patched the tool not to print the message in
the POSIX mode either:
$ ./time-1.8/time -p /usr/bin/false
real 0.00
user 0.00
sys 0.00
I hope Fedora's time-1.8 won't disrupt your scripts so blatantly.
-- Petr