This is a terse description of the new features added to readline-6.0 since
the release of readline-5.2.
1. New Features in Readline
a. A new variable, rl_sort_completion_matches; allows applications to inhibit
match list sorting (but beware: some things don't work right if
applications do this).
b. A new variable, rl_completion_invoking_key; allows applications to discover
the key that invoked rl_complete or rl_menu_complete.
c. The functions rl_block_sigint and rl_release_sigint are now public and
available to calling applications who want to protect critical sections
(like redisplay).
d. The functions rl_save_state and rl_restore_state are now public and
available to calling applications; documented rest of readline's state
flag values.
e. A new user-settable variable, `history-size', allows setting the maximum
number of entries in the history list.
f. There is a new implementation of menu completion, with several improvements
over the old; the most notable improvement is a better `completions
browsing' mode.
g. The menu completion code now uses the rl_menu_completion_entry_function
variable, allowing applications to provide their own menu completion
generators.
h. There is support for replacing a prefix of a pathname with a `...' when
displaying possible completions. This is controllable by setting the
`completion-prefix-display-length' variable. Matches with a common prefix
longer than this value have the common prefix replaced with `...'.
i. There is a new `revert-all-at-newline' variable. If enabled, readline will
undo all outstanding changes to all history lines when `accept-line' is
executed.
This imports some fixes from Debian. First and foremost:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2006-11/msg00017.html
Bug-Description:
In some cases, code that is intended to be used in the presence of multibyte
characters is called when no such characters are present, leading to incorrect
display position calculations and incorrect redisplay.
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-readline/2007-01/msg00002.html
Bug-Description:
Readline neglects to reallocate the array it uses to keep track of wrapped
screen lines when increasing its size. This will eventually result in
segmentation faults when given sufficiently long input.
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2007-02/msg00054.html
Bug-Description:
When moving the cursor, bash sometimes misplaces the cursor when the prompt
contains two or more multibyte characters. The particular circumstance that
uncovered the problem was having the (multibyte) current directory name in
the prompt string.
...all related to display.c. Also add include of <stdio.h> to
two of the readline header files.
Changes in this version are mostly bugfixes; some new functionality
has been added as well. For an exhaustive list of changes, please
look at the CHANGES file included in the distribution.
* bug fixes
* improve linking with C++ code
+ a new file, rltypedefs.h, contains the new typedefs for function pointers
+ several minor additions to the API to customize look of readline
+ more complete documentation for public functions and variables
Relevant changes from 4.0:
e. The history library tries to truncate the history file only if it is a
regular file.
f. A bug that caused _rl_dispatch to address negative array indices on
systems with signed chars was fixed.
g. rl-yank-nth-arg now leaves the history position the same as when it was
called.
m. The quoted-insert code will now insert tty special chars like ^C.
n. A bug was fixed that caused the display code to reference memory before
the start of the prompt string.
p. A bug was fixed in readline's signal handling that could cause infinite
recursion in signal handlers.
q. A bug was fixed that caused the point to be less than zero when rl_forward
was given a very large numeric argument.
r. The vi-mode code now gets characters via the application-settable value
of rl_getc_function rather than calling rl_getc directly.
t. Fixed a bug in the redisplay code for lines with more than 256 line
breaks.
u. A bug was fixed which caused invisible character markers to not be
stripped from the prompt string if the terminal was in no-echo mode.
v. Readline no longer tries to get the variables it needs for redisplay
from the termcap entry if the calling application has specified its
own redisplay function. Readline treats the terminal as `dumb' in
this case.
w. Fixes to the SIGWINCH code so that a multiple-line prompt with escape
sequences is redrawn correctly.
b. Parentheses matching is now always compiled into readline, and enabled
or disabled when the value of the `blink-matching-paren' variable is
changed.
e. history-search-{forward,backward} now leave the point at the end of the
line when the string to search for is empty, like
{reverse,forward}-search-history.
f. history-search-{forward,backward} now leave the last history line found
in the readline buffer if the second or subsequent search fails.
g. New function for use by applications: rl_on_new_line_with_prompt, used
when an application displays the prompt itself before calling readline().
h. New variable for use by applications: rl_already_prompted. An application
that displays the prompt itself before calling readline() must set this to
a non-zero value.
i. A new variable, rl_gnu_readline_p, always 1. The intent is that an
application can verify whether or not it is linked with the `real'
readline library or some substitute.
in tree, so take the necessary elements from Jaromir's package:
+ build and install libhistory
+ build and install shared history and readline libraries.
+ install readline and history info pages with the correct names
Preserve change from the original package:
+ don't assume that the Makefile SHELL is Bourne shell - set it
explicitly, so that Bourne shell scripts aren't run by the csh(1)
NetBSD packages collection. This is because some other packages play
dirty and muck about with the internals of the readline structures, so
our libedit-based emulation won't suffice for that. A pity.
