1 (Note: this file has been re-arranged to be in reverse chronological
2 order, which is The Right Thing for ChangeLogs - DLC)
4 June 02, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.28.0)
6 SECURITY [low risk]: avoid overflow with the -i flag
8 Correct attributions and typos (Thanks to Tobin Yehle.)
12 May 02, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.26.0)
14 SECURITY: Avoid integer overflow in parsing the percentages which caused
15 using negative integers.
17 https://metacpan.org/pod/Test::Trap is a new tests' dependency
19 Format strings cleanups in C.
21 April 30, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.24.0)
23 SECURITY: Avoid some potential buffer overflows in unstr, strfile and randstr.
24 - This was found to exist in NetBSD's fortune, and FreeBSD's fortune
25 as well (OpenBSD's fortune appear to have been fixed).
27 Add regression valgrind tests for the buffer overflows.
29 Some cleanups inspired by OpenBSD'd fortune.
31 April 29, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.22.0)
33 SECURITY: Avoid some hypothetical buffer overflows in unstr, strfile and randstr.
35 Modernize and refactor the code.
37 Avoid build targets' proliferation in CMake.
39 April 04, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.20.0)
41 Further avoid double traversal if FORTDIR == LOCFORTDIR.
43 Using clang-format to format the code.
45 Eliminate -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE warnings.
47 Modernize and refactor the code.
49 March 30, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.18.0)
51 Avoid double traversal if FORTDIR == LOCFORTDIR.
53 Typos' corrections and a new quote.
55 February 26, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.16.0)
57 Better portability to Microsoft Windows and other OSes
58 Thanks to AppVeyor (done by Shlomi Fish).
60 Add the -u flag [from debian]
62 Add fortune.desktop [from debian]
64 Remove backspaces in a cookie [from debian]
66 Complete the lyrics of a Leonard Cohen song [from debian]
68 Correct a misattribution.
70 February 23, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.14.0)
72 Correct some typos and add some new cookies.
74 Better Win32/Win64 Portability (AppVeyor is still failing.)
78 December 18, 2019 (fortune-mod 2.12.0)
80 Extract rinutils as a package and require it as a dep:
81 https://github.com/shlomif/rinutils/ .
83 Move some jokes to the offensive collection:
84 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/pull/38 - thanks
87 June 30, 2019 (fortune-mod 2.10.0)
89 Move strfile and unstr to /usr/bin :
90 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/issues/35
92 Code cleanups: warnings and portability.
94 Better porting to windows / appveyor-CI
97 June 07, 2019 (fortune-mod 2.8.0)
99 Add some quotes by amigojapan.
101 Some improvements for spelling, punctuation and grammar.
103 Extract a common C header.
107 December 19, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.6.2)
109 Fix the cmake files installation paths. See
110 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/pull/29 .
112 Some improvements for spelling, punctuation and grammar.
114 Normalize the numbering of "Great Moments in History":
115 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/issues/28 .
117 July 10, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.6.1)
119 Fix the previously rotated display of offensive fortunes (using the "-o"
120 or "-a" flags). See https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/issues/26 .
122 Incorporate several more minor patches from Debian.
124 June 26, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.6.0)
126 Incorporate patches from the Debian package.
128 Add the "tao", "pratchett" and many individual cookies.
130 March 22, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.4.1)
132 Add the missing cmake/Shlomif_Common.cmake file.
134 March 22, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.4.0)
136 Fix issue #24 reported by @pouar of an underflow error in strfile.
138 Fix some GCC warnings with the Recode flags.
140 Remove some trailing empty lines in fortunes
142 February 15, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.2.1)
144 Fix some mispellings.
146 Remove some duplicates.
148 Thanks to bug reporters on the bug trackers of Linux distributions.
150 January 31, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.2.0)
152 Add the "disclaimer" cookie file (thanks to mathew).
154 Correct some problems in the documentation.
156 Fix some memory leaks (thanks to valgrind).
158 Reenable the valgrind tests (requires Recode 3.7).
160 January 11, 2018 (fortune-mod-2.0.0)
164 Deprecate the BSD_REGEX - we now use only POSIX ones.
168 March 25, 2017 (fortune-mod-1.99.5)
170 Add a new cmake-based configuration/build/install system.
172 Converted the source files to UTF-8.
174 Added automated tests.
176 Removed trailing whitespace.
178 Reformatted long (> 80 chars) lines.
182 Fixed some compiler warnings.
184 Added a build-time option to remove the “-o” (= “offensive”) flag.
186 Incorporated some downstream patches from Linux distributions.
189 March 05, 2004 (fortune-mod-1.99.1)
191 Most of the changes have occurred at some point in time in the last
194 A high number of spelling, punctuation, formatting and grammar
197 Internationalisation support.
199 New -c option to see which file a fortune came from.
203 Incorporated a couple of minor changes made in the (old) Debian
204 fortune-mod package, including the addition of an extra data file
205 called 'cookie'. Renamed some documentation files, and included some
206 install information for non-Linux users. Added a "-v" option to
207 report the program version.
209 I intend to submit this distribution to SunSITE RSN.
211 -- Dennis L. Clark <dbugger@progsoc.uts.edu.au>
215 This release fixes many of the portability problems with the
216 fortune-mod program released by Amy Lewis in October, 1995. The
217 previous version had many Linux-isms in it, which left it unworkable
218 on any other platform. This version replaces most of these with more
219 standard calls, making it more likely to work under other platforms.
220 The Makefiles have been modified so that GNU's gcc and make are no
221 longer required: any standard make and ANSI-compatible C compiler
222 should work. Sorry, pre-ANSI compilers are not supported (c'mon, this
223 is the 90's, darn it!)
225 This version has been tested to work on SunOS 4.1.x as well as Linux.
226 All changes made to the sources were as platform-independant as
227 possible. Therefore, no "#ifdef LINUX" or "#ifdef SUNOS4" directives
228 appear in the code. An effect of this is that a number of 'implicit
229 declaration' warnings are emitted by gcc under SunOS 4.1.x, but this a
230 problem with SunOS's standard headers, not with the program or the
231 compiler. The benefit of this approach is that it eases the work of
232 expanding the port to include other platforms. Bug reports and fixes
233 for other platforms are most welcome!
235 A few "standard" C function calls were replaced with more standard
236 counterparts at various points. Generally, when there was a choice
237 between a BSD version of a function and a POSIX version, the POSIX
238 version was favoured (even though fortune originated on BSD). An
239 exception to this was the regex functions: either POSIX or BSD
240 versions can be used, with selection made via the top-level Makefile.
242 Fortune and strfile also compiles on Solaris 2.5, but a discrepency
243 between the declaration and implementation of 'struct dirent' on the
244 test platform caused fortune to execute incorrectly there. It is not
245 certain whether this is a bug in the header file, the C library, or
248 While the making of this release was not meant to become a bug
249 search-and-destroy mission, some bugs were inadvertently discovered
250 and fixed. including the known bug of using -a with a file that occurs
251 in both the offensive and inoffensive directories. Fixing this
252 particular bug required a way to be able to separately identify two
253 fortune files with the same name, with one in the inoffensive
254 directory, the other one in the offensive directory. Now, such a name
255 will be taken to be the inoffensive file by default. However, you can
256 now append '-o' to a fortune name, and the '-o' will be removed and
257 the offensive directory will be searched. Thus you can say (assuming
258 you use the distributed datfiles):
260 fortune 80% politics politics-o
262 Which has an 80% change of giving an "inoffensive" political fortune,
263 and a 20% change of giving an "offensive" political one. Note that
264 this makes fortune-mod backwards-compatible with BSD fortune, but only
265 for users, not fortune database maintainers.
267 Of course, this solution only passes the buck: with the above example
268 again, if you have a 'politics-o' file in your inoffensive directory,
269 you are back to square one. OTOH, seeing that '-o' originally was
270 meant for offensive fortunes, using it for inoffensive ones is simply
273 Bug fixed: Fortune's definition of a fortune length (for -s and -l)
274 was inconsistent. Unordered fortunes counted the 2 delimiting
275 characters (as hinted in the man page), but sorted or randomized
276 fortunes did not. Now the delimiting characters are _NEVER_ counted,
277 so you will always get the length limit you expect.
279 Another bug fix: -l and -s can now work together with -m. Previously
280 -l and -s were ignored when -m was in effect. The new behaviour helps
281 me count how many long or short fortunes there are in a file.
283 Ansify has been removed from the package, as well as some filter
284 scripts from NetBSD that no longer appear useful. Randstr has been
285 kept, but has not been improved in any way. It at least has a man
286 page: maybe somebody will find it useful.
288 Some of the documentation (including the man pages) has been improved
289 and updated, and some files have been renamed so that the package
290 looks less Linux-specific.
292 -- Dennis L. Clark <dbugger@progsoc.uts.edu.au>
295 Ansify has been abandoned. I'm going to distribute this working version
296 of fortune, and then see how difficult it would be to add termcap/terminfo
297 enhancements to fortune itself--I don't anticipate serious problems, but
298 I'd rather go ahead and get this on the net.
300 A last-minute change was made to the way that percentages are displayed
301 with -f; it is now in the format nnn.nn%. The reason for this is that
302 with the multiplication of small files, fortune -af displayed a large
303 number of "0%"s--no worse than the old version, but not helpful.
305 The fortunes database was finally cleaned up, and this version is now
306 being distributed (at least, I hope it is). I don't consider the current
307 division of fortunes among files absolutely canonical; some are certainly
308 in the wrong places. But things are *better*.
310 Amy A. Lewis alewis@email.unc.edu
313 Another utility, ansify, now compiles; it has not been tested at all, so
314 it may not work even slightly.
316 Ansify is a rather stupid program, all things considered, but the work on
317 it does raise an interesting possibility for an enhanced fortune. At
318 present, the fortune databases contain x^Hy sequences for underline and
319 special characters (and this can be extended to include bold, = x^Hx).
320 Ansify is stupid because it doesn't use the proper tools, ie termcap or
321 terminfo (hmmm ... since it works on files, that may not be so stupid);
322 it appears that if that can be done, then a termcap/terminfo enhanced
323 fortune could be produced, which would recognize the existence of ^H in
324 a string and attempt to display using appropriate control sequences.
325 This sort of modification would be of greater interest to casual users,
326 I think, than even the bug fixes, and since it would not force changes
327 in the storage of fortunes, it is eminently portable. Consider this a
330 Added (early October 95):
331 A new executable, rot, which is a rot13 filter (a caesar cipher). Most
332 probably have caesar, but on the other hand, if you compile this mess
333 as root, caesar probably isn't in the path.
335 A new parameter to fortune, -n, which permits you to specify the length
336 at which to break between long (-l) and short (-s) fortunes.
338 fortune -f now shows probabilities.
340 A bug: fortune -a nn% filename filename ... now fails without an error
341 message, if the filename named following the percentage exists in both
342 the inoffensive and the offensive directories (that is, if you have two
343 files containing definitions, one called fortunes/definitions and one
344 called fortunes/off/definitions, and call fortune as: fortune -a 10%
345 definitions religion politics ..., then fortune simply fails). This
346 appears to be an artifact of the changes that were made in storage/
347 naming of offensive fortunes. It only happens with the combination of
348 a percentage with -a and inoffensive/offensive files that share a name.
349 Temporary workaround: rename one or the other of the files (*sigh* I
350 don't like that as a solution).
352 The man pages have been updated. The old man pages are also available,
353 but are not installed unless you do it yourself (the new ones are). The
354 new man pages have the extension .man; the old ones have numeric
357 A place has been created for fortune files containing HTML tags (the
358 reason I started playing with this mess was because I wanted to be
359 able to format fortunes nicely for the web without having to run an
360 enormously complex script to figure out from formatting how best to
361 display things, a particular problem since the formatting isn't
362 consistent). Tagged fortunes don't exist yet, and I'm seriously
363 considering creating a slightly different fortune binary that would
364 output the necessary headers and trailers (reducing the CGI script
365 to complete triviality) (-f isn't really needed for a webfortune).
367 Todo: I'm thinking of adding a -x to unstr, to rot13 the output. This
368 would have the effect of putting all the necessary tools in one package.
369 It further breaks compatibility with BSD tools (which has *mostly* been
370 maintained, merely enhanced slightly, although the change in how
371 offensive files are distinguished from inoffensive might be regarded as
372 breaking compatibility) by adding yet another parameter to unstr, which
373 didn't have any, before. So I haven't decided, yet.
375 Todo: KOI8 encoded fortunes? They couldn't be rotated without a great
376 deal of trouble, of course.
380 The way that fortune -m prints its output has been slightly changed. It
381 used to print the delimiter first, then, if this were the first fortune
382 from a particular file, it printed the name of the file in parentheses.
383 It now prints the first fortune without an initial delimiter; if the
384 fortune is the first from a particular file, it then prints
385 (filename), newline, delimiter, newline *to stderr*. Redirect stderr to
386 stdout to get something *similar to* (but not the same as) the old
387 behavior. The new behavior, if stderr is redirected to stdout, and
388 both are then redirected to a file, produces fictitious entries, one
389 per file in which a match was found. However, whether stderr is
390 redirected or not, the new format produces files that strfile can
391 parse without choking (the old format, since it placed the filename
392 on the same line as the delimiter character, effectively forced editing
393 of the file in order to make it usable by strfile, unless the option of
394 concatenating two fortunes with an ugly "% (filename)" line separating
395 them was considered acceptable output). Under the new display format,
396 if stderr is redirected into the file, you end up with filenames marking
397 the separation between files (as before), but they are now valid text
398 strings (which should probably, therefore, be deleted).
400 In other words, if you don't care what files the original text came from,
401 and want a new file containing (let us say), quotes from Mark Twain,
403 fortune -am '-- Mark Twain' >twain
404 The files accessed would march down the screen; the fortunes would be
405 stored in parsable format into the file twain. If, however, you planned
406 to edit (perhaps to remove the quotes from the original file, you might
407 then wish to redirect stderr to stdout. Using bash:
408 fortune -am '-- Mark Twain' &>twain
410 fortune -am '-- Mark Twain' >twain 2>&1
412 [The above is now in the man page, more or less]
415 Too many changes to mention, really. Look at the source code for
416 comments on individual files. LINUX.DIF has been removed.
418 It is worth noting that strfile was completely broken as distributed,
419 and fortune had code to make it report a different file list than the
420 one it used to retrieve fortunes. There's some rather strong language
421 on the subject in strfile.c; if it offends you, tough.
423 Bugs were fixed, and some enhancements were added. Unstr, in
424 particular, has had its command line considerably enhanced. Strfile
425 now *really does* sort, instead of merely setting the 'sorted' flag.
426 Ditto for randomizing.
428 Noteworthy: the way to distinguish between offensive and non-offensive
429 files has changed for fortune. A second directory (which may be a
430 subdirectory of the main fortune directory; the program doesn't
431 add files recursively down a directory tree) has been added to
432 pathnames.h. Offensive files should be placed there. There is no
433 longer any need to add the -o suffix to file names, and the problems
434 with finding files (especially offensive ones) seem to have
435 disappeared in the process.
437 Currently, I'm working on breaking the fortune files themselves into
438 smaller, more manageable pieces, checking spelling, punctuation, and
439 grammar, and trying to reduce redundancy. The eventual goal, after
440 the files are cleaned up, is another set of files carrying HTML tags,
441 which would then massively simplify a CGI script that calls fortune.
445 A 'randstr' (I want to call it 'lottery,' but I won't) utility, which
446 amounts to a poor woman's stripped-down fortune, to illustrate some
447 other possible uses of strfile-type random-access strings files.
449 Amy A. Lewis alewis@email.unc.edu
projects / fortune-mod / blob