Heirloom Project

Last updated
The Heirloom Project
Developer(s) Gunnar Ritter
Stable release
070715 / July 15, 2007;18 years ago (2007-07-15)
Written in C
Operating system Unix-like
Available inEnglish
License Various, including CDDL
Website heirloom.sourceforge.net

The Heirloom Project is a collection of traditional Unix utilities. Most of them are derived from original Unix source code, as released as open-source by Caldera and Sun. [1]

Contents

The project has the following components:

Although in general the intention of the project is to provide versions of Unix programs whose behavior mimics that of the classic versions, some improvements have been made. In particular, many of the Heirloom programs have been adapted to handle UTF-8 Unicode. Most programs have both a classic version and a POSIX conformant variant. [1]

References

  1. 1 2 "The Heirloom Project". heirloom.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2023-11-26.

Heirloom Toolchest, New Generation

heirloom-ng
Developer(s) Pindorama
Initial releaseOctober 4, 2021;3 years ago (2021-10-04)
Stable release
heirloom-ng-250220 / February 20, 2025;6 months ago (2025-02-20)
Repository github.com/Projeto-Pindorama/heirloom-ng
Written in C, ksh93 and other minor scripting languages.
Operating system Unix-like
Available inEnglish
License zlib License, CDDL and others.
Website heirloom-ng.pindorama.net.br

Heirloom Toolchest New Generation, or heirloom-ng, is a fork [1] derived from the latest stable release of the Heirloom Toolchest, created by the Pindorama project. It incorporates changes made after the last formal release of Heirloom Toolchest [2] , along with new implementations or ports for a handful of utilities that are expected to be present in new systems and/or enhance user experience, maintaining the same discipline present in the original project [3] and modernization in parts of the source code [4] , with older utilities receiving occasional maintenance when necessary. It is actively used by the Copacabana Linux distribution, as integral part of its userspace, but it is also supported on many UNIX-compatible operating systems. [5] As of April 2024, a test suite proposal was put en route to a new version [6] , but it has been severely delayed because of the massiveness of test cases along with insufficient labor force for completing it in time for the release made in February 20th, 2025; it may not be source of preoccupation regarding the project's maintaining status since it is not an essential component of the project, but an "extra" for ensuring that porting efforts can be made considerably less laborious.

  1. "The Heirloom Project – OSnews". OSNews. Retrieved 2025-08-20.
  2. "Merge post-070715 commits that were trapped in the old CVS repository. by takusuman · Pull Request #43 · Projeto-Pindorama/heirloom-ng". GitHub. Retrieved 2025-08-29.
  3. "heirloom-ng/README.md at 250220 · Projeto-Pindorama/heirloom-ng". GitHub. Retrieved 2025-08-29.
  4. "Adapted yes.c and vpfmt.c to ANSI C · Projeto-Pindorama/heirloom-ng@ce3885f". GitHub. Retrieved 2025-08-25.
  5. "Heirloom New Generation" . Retrieved 2025-08-29.
  6. "Heirloom test suite by takusuman · Pull Request #49 · Projeto-Pindorama/heirloom-ng" . Retrieved 2025-08-29.