1 (Note: this file has been re-arranged to be in reverse chronological
2 order, which is The Right Thing for ChangeLogs - DLC)
4 August 30, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.29.1)
8 Fix the build and tests on AppVeyor-CI / Windows
10 Fix some compiler warnings.
12 August 20, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.29.0)
16 Convert the documentation from troff to DocBook 5/XML using
17 doclifter ( http://www.catb.org/~esr/doclifter/ ). The resultant troff
18 man pages are included in the source release tarball.
20 Fix formatting of several cookies.
22 Minor build fixes (avoid rebuilding the symlinks).
24 June 02, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.28.0)
26 SECURITY [low risk]: avoid overflow with the -i flag
28 Correct attributions and typos (Thanks to Tobin Yehle.)
32 May 02, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.26.0)
34 SECURITY: Avoid integer overflow in parsing the percentages which caused
35 using negative integers.
37 https://metacpan.org/pod/Test::Trap is a new tests' dependency
39 Format strings cleanups in C.
41 April 30, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.24.0)
43 SECURITY: Avoid some potential buffer overflows in unstr, strfile and randstr.
44 - This was found to exist in NetBSD's fortune, and FreeBSD's fortune
45 as well (OpenBSD's fortune appear to have been fixed).
47 Add regression valgrind tests for the buffer overflows.
49 Some cleanups inspired by OpenBSD'd fortune.
51 April 29, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.22.0)
53 SECURITY: Avoid some hypothetical buffer overflows in unstr, strfile and randstr.
55 Modernize and refactor the code.
57 Avoid build targets' proliferation in CMake.
59 April 04, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.20.0)
61 Further avoid double traversal if FORTDIR == LOCFORTDIR.
63 Using clang-format to format the code.
65 Eliminate -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE warnings.
67 Modernize and refactor the code.
69 March 30, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.18.0)
71 Avoid double traversal if FORTDIR == LOCFORTDIR.
73 Typos' corrections and a new quote.
75 February 26, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.16.0)
77 Better portability to Microsoft Windows and other OSes
78 Thanks to AppVeyor (done by Shlomi Fish).
80 Add the -u flag [from debian]
82 Add fortune.desktop [from debian]
84 Remove backspaces in a cookie [from debian]
86 Complete the lyrics of a Leonard Cohen song [from debian]
88 Correct a misattribution.
90 February 23, 2020 (fortune-mod 2.14.0)
92 Correct some typos and add some new cookies.
94 Better Win32/Win64 Portability (AppVeyor is still failing.)
98 December 18, 2019 (fortune-mod 2.12.0)
100 Extract rinutils as a package and require it as a dep:
101 https://github.com/shlomif/rinutils/ .
103 Move some jokes to the offensive collection:
104 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/pull/38 - thanks
107 June 30, 2019 (fortune-mod 2.10.0)
109 Move strfile and unstr to /usr/bin :
110 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/issues/35
112 Code cleanups: warnings and portability.
114 Better porting to windows / appveyor-CI
117 June 07, 2019 (fortune-mod 2.8.0)
119 Add some quotes by amigojapan.
121 Some improvements for spelling, punctuation and grammar.
123 Extract a common C header.
127 December 19, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.6.2)
129 Fix the cmake files installation paths. See
130 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/pull/29 .
132 Some improvements for spelling, punctuation and grammar.
134 Normalize the numbering of "Great Moments in History":
135 https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/issues/28 .
137 July 10, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.6.1)
139 Fix the previously rotated display of offensive fortunes (using the "-o"
140 or "-a" flags). See https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod/issues/26 .
142 Incorporate several more minor patches from Debian.
144 June 26, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.6.0)
146 Incorporate patches from the Debian package.
148 Add the "tao", "pratchett" and many individual cookies.
150 March 22, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.4.1)
152 Add the missing cmake/Shlomif_Common.cmake file.
154 March 22, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.4.0)
156 Fix issue #24 reported by @pouar of an underflow error in strfile.
158 Fix some GCC warnings with the Recode flags.
160 Remove some trailing empty lines in fortunes
162 February 15, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.2.1)
164 Fix some mispellings.
166 Remove some duplicates.
168 Thanks to bug reporters on the bug trackers of Linux distributions.
170 January 31, 2018 (fortune-mod 2.2.0)
172 Add the "disclaimer" cookie file (thanks to mathew).
174 Correct some problems in the documentation.
176 Fix some memory leaks (thanks to valgrind).
178 Reenable the valgrind tests (requires Recode 3.7).
180 January 11, 2018 (fortune-mod-2.0.0)
184 Deprecate the BSD_REGEX - we now use only POSIX ones.
188 March 25, 2017 (fortune-mod-1.99.5)
190 Add a new cmake-based configuration/build/install system.
192 Converted the source files to UTF-8.
194 Added automated tests.
196 Removed trailing whitespace.
198 Reformatted long (> 80 chars) lines.
202 Fixed some compiler warnings.
204 Added a build-time option to remove the “-o” (= “offensive”) flag.
206 Incorporated some downstream patches from Linux distributions.
209 March 05, 2004 (fortune-mod-1.99.1)
211 Most of the changes have occurred at some point in time in the last
214 A high number of spelling, punctuation, formatting and grammar
217 Internationalisation support.
219 New -c option to see which file a fortune came from.
223 Incorporated a couple of minor changes made in the (old) Debian
224 fortune-mod package, including the addition of an extra data file
225 called 'cookie'. Renamed some documentation files, and included some
226 install information for non-Linux users. Added a "-v" option to
227 report the program version.
229 I intend to submit this distribution to SunSITE RSN.
231 -- Dennis L. Clark <dbugger@progsoc.uts.edu.au>
235 This release fixes many of the portability problems with the
236 fortune-mod program released by Amy Lewis in October, 1995. The
237 previous version had many Linux-isms in it, which left it unworkable
238 on any other platform. This version replaces most of these with more
239 standard calls, making it more likely to work under other platforms.
240 The Makefiles have been modified so that GNU's gcc and make are no
241 longer required: any standard make and ANSI-compatible C compiler
242 should work. Sorry, pre-ANSI compilers are not supported (c'mon, this
243 is the 90's, darn it!)
245 This version has been tested to work on SunOS 4.1.x as well as Linux.
246 All changes made to the sources were as platform-independant as
247 possible. Therefore, no "#ifdef LINUX" or "#ifdef SUNOS4" directives
248 appear in the code. An effect of this is that a number of 'implicit
249 declaration' warnings are emitted by gcc under SunOS 4.1.x, but this a
250 problem with SunOS's standard headers, not with the program or the
251 compiler. The benefit of this approach is that it eases the work of
252 expanding the port to include other platforms. Bug reports and fixes
253 for other platforms are most welcome!
255 A few "standard" C function calls were replaced with more standard
256 counterparts at various points. Generally, when there was a choice
257 between a BSD version of a function and a POSIX version, the POSIX
258 version was favoured (even though fortune originated on BSD). An
259 exception to this was the regex functions: either POSIX or BSD
260 versions can be used, with selection made via the top-level Makefile.
262 Fortune and strfile also compiles on Solaris 2.5, but a discrepency
263 between the declaration and implementation of 'struct dirent' on the
264 test platform caused fortune to execute incorrectly there. It is not
265 certain whether this is a bug in the header file, the C library, or
268 While the making of this release was not meant to become a bug
269 search-and-destroy mission, some bugs were inadvertently discovered
270 and fixed. including the known bug of using -a with a file that occurs
271 in both the offensive and inoffensive directories. Fixing this
272 particular bug required a way to be able to separately identify two
273 fortune files with the same name, with one in the inoffensive
274 directory, the other one in the offensive directory. Now, such a name
275 will be taken to be the inoffensive file by default. However, you can
276 now append '-o' to a fortune name, and the '-o' will be removed and
277 the offensive directory will be searched. Thus you can say (assuming
278 you use the distributed datfiles):
280 fortune 80% politics politics-o
282 Which has an 80% change of giving an "inoffensive" political fortune,
283 and a 20% change of giving an "offensive" political one. Note that
284 this makes fortune-mod backwards-compatible with BSD fortune, but only
285 for users, not fortune database maintainers.
287 Of course, this solution only passes the buck: with the above example
288 again, if you have a 'politics-o' file in your inoffensive directory,
289 you are back to square one. OTOH, seeing that '-o' originally was
290 meant for offensive fortunes, using it for inoffensive ones is simply
293 Bug fixed: Fortune's definition of a fortune length (for -s and -l)
294 was inconsistent. Unordered fortunes counted the 2 delimiting
295 characters (as hinted in the man page), but sorted or randomized
296 fortunes did not. Now the delimiting characters are _NEVER_ counted,
297 so you will always get the length limit you expect.
299 Another bug fix: -l and -s can now work together with -m. Previously
300 -l and -s were ignored when -m was in effect. The new behaviour helps
301 me count how many long or short fortunes there are in a file.
303 Ansify has been removed from the package, as well as some filter
304 scripts from NetBSD that no longer appear useful. Randstr has been
305 kept, but has not been improved in any way. It at least has a man
306 page: maybe somebody will find it useful.
308 Some of the documentation (including the man pages) has been improved
309 and updated, and some files have been renamed so that the package
310 looks less Linux-specific.
312 -- Dennis L. Clark <dbugger@progsoc.uts.edu.au>
315 Ansify has been abandoned. I'm going to distribute this working version
316 of fortune, and then see how difficult it would be to add termcap/terminfo
317 enhancements to fortune itself--I don't anticipate serious problems, but
318 I'd rather go ahead and get this on the net.
320 A last-minute change was made to the way that percentages are displayed
321 with -f; it is now in the format nnn.nn%. The reason for this is that
322 with the multiplication of small files, fortune -af displayed a large
323 number of "0%"s--no worse than the old version, but not helpful.
325 The fortunes database was finally cleaned up, and this version is now
326 being distributed (at least, I hope it is). I don't consider the current
327 division of fortunes among files absolutely canonical; some are certainly
328 in the wrong places. But things are *better*.
330 Amy A. Lewis alewis@email.unc.edu
333 Another utility, ansify, now compiles; it has not been tested at all, so
334 it may not work even slightly.
336 Ansify is a rather stupid program, all things considered, but the work on
337 it does raise an interesting possibility for an enhanced fortune. At
338 present, the fortune databases contain x^Hy sequences for underline and
339 special characters (and this can be extended to include bold, = x^Hx).
340 Ansify is stupid because it doesn't use the proper tools, ie termcap or
341 terminfo (hmmm ... since it works on files, that may not be so stupid);
342 it appears that if that can be done, then a termcap/terminfo enhanced
343 fortune could be produced, which would recognize the existence of ^H in
344 a string and attempt to display using appropriate control sequences.
345 This sort of modification would be of greater interest to casual users,
346 I think, than even the bug fixes, and since it would not force changes
347 in the storage of fortunes, it is eminently portable. Consider this a
350 Added (early October 95):
351 A new executable, rot, which is a rot13 filter (a caesar cipher). Most
352 probably have caesar, but on the other hand, if you compile this mess
353 as root, caesar probably isn't in the path.
355 A new parameter to fortune, -n, which permits you to specify the length
356 at which to break between long (-l) and short (-s) fortunes.
358 fortune -f now shows probabilities.
360 A bug: fortune -a nn% filename filename ... now fails without an error
361 message, if the filename named following the percentage exists in both
362 the inoffensive and the offensive directories (that is, if you have two
363 files containing definitions, one called fortunes/definitions and one
364 called fortunes/off/definitions, and call fortune as: fortune -a 10%
365 definitions religion politics ..., then fortune simply fails). This
366 appears to be an artifact of the changes that were made in storage/
367 naming of offensive fortunes. It only happens with the combination of
368 a percentage with -a and inoffensive/offensive files that share a name.
369 Temporary workaround: rename one or the other of the files (*sigh* I
370 don't like that as a solution).
372 The man pages have been updated. The old man pages are also available,
373 but are not installed unless you do it yourself (the new ones are). The
374 new man pages have the extension .man; the old ones have numeric
377 A place has been created for fortune files containing HTML tags (the
378 reason I started playing with this mess was because I wanted to be
379 able to format fortunes nicely for the web without having to run an
380 enormously complex script to figure out from formatting how best to
381 display things, a particular problem since the formatting isn't
382 consistent). Tagged fortunes don't exist yet, and I'm seriously
383 considering creating a slightly different fortune binary that would
384 output the necessary headers and trailers (reducing the CGI script
385 to complete triviality) (-f isn't really needed for a webfortune).
387 Todo: I'm thinking of adding a -x to unstr, to rot13 the output. This
388 would have the effect of putting all the necessary tools in one package.
389 It further breaks compatibility with BSD tools (which has *mostly* been
390 maintained, merely enhanced slightly, although the change in how
391 offensive files are distinguished from inoffensive might be regarded as
392 breaking compatibility) by adding yet another parameter to unstr, which
393 didn't have any, before. So I haven't decided, yet.
395 Todo: KOI8 encoded fortunes? They couldn't be rotated without a great
396 deal of trouble, of course.
400 The way that fortune -m prints its output has been slightly changed. It
401 used to print the delimiter first, then, if this were the first fortune
402 from a particular file, it printed the name of the file in parentheses.
403 It now prints the first fortune without an initial delimiter; if the
404 fortune is the first from a particular file, it then prints
405 (filename), newline, delimiter, newline *to stderr*. Redirect stderr to
406 stdout to get something *similar to* (but not the same as) the old
407 behavior. The new behavior, if stderr is redirected to stdout, and
408 both are then redirected to a file, produces fictitious entries, one
409 per file in which a match was found. However, whether stderr is
410 redirected or not, the new format produces files that strfile can
411 parse without choking (the old format, since it placed the filename
412 on the same line as the delimiter character, effectively forced editing
413 of the file in order to make it usable by strfile, unless the option of
414 concatenating two fortunes with an ugly "% (filename)" line separating
415 them was considered acceptable output). Under the new display format,
416 if stderr is redirected into the file, you end up with filenames marking
417 the separation between files (as before), but they are now valid text
418 strings (which should probably, therefore, be deleted).
420 In other words, if you don't care what files the original text came from,
421 and want a new file containing (let us say), quotes from Mark Twain,
423 fortune -am '-- Mark Twain' >twain
424 The files accessed would march down the screen; the fortunes would be
425 stored in parsable format into the file twain. If, however, you planned
426 to edit (perhaps to remove the quotes from the original file, you might
427 then wish to redirect stderr to stdout. Using bash:
428 fortune -am '-- Mark Twain' &>twain
430 fortune -am '-- Mark Twain' >twain 2>&1
432 [The above is now in the man page, more or less]
435 Too many changes to mention, really. Look at the source code for
436 comments on individual files. LINUX.DIF has been removed.
438 It is worth noting that strfile was completely broken as distributed,
439 and fortune had code to make it report a different file list than the
440 one it used to retrieve fortunes. There's some rather strong language
441 on the subject in strfile.c; if it offends you, tough.
443 Bugs were fixed, and some enhancements were added. Unstr, in
444 particular, has had its command line considerably enhanced. Strfile
445 now *really does* sort, instead of merely setting the 'sorted' flag.
446 Ditto for randomizing.
448 Noteworthy: the way to distinguish between offensive and non-offensive
449 files has changed for fortune. A second directory (which may be a
450 subdirectory of the main fortune directory; the program doesn't
451 add files recursively down a directory tree) has been added to
452 pathnames.h. Offensive files should be placed there. There is no
453 longer any need to add the -o suffix to file names, and the problems
454 with finding files (especially offensive ones) seem to have
455 disappeared in the process.
457 Currently, I'm working on breaking the fortune files themselves into
458 smaller, more manageable pieces, checking spelling, punctuation, and
459 grammar, and trying to reduce redundancy. The eventual goal, after
460 the files are cleaned up, is another set of files carrying HTML tags,
461 which would then massively simplify a CGI script that calls fortune.
465 A 'randstr' (I want to call it 'lottery,' but I won't) utility, which
466 amounts to a poor woman's stripped-down fortune, to illustrate some
467 other possible uses of strfile-type random-access strings files.
469 Amy A. Lewis alewis@email.unc.edu
projects / fortune-mod / blob