eric@snark.uu.net (Eric S. Raymond) (04/12/89)
Apologies to all who sent MRs and "may I join?" requests this weekend; my
best-laid plans for handling mail via my T5100 portable ganged agley when
I discovered that the hotel had wired the room phones to the wall via a
bizarre form of non-modular security connector. Grrr...next time I travel
I'm taking a screwdriver and a crimping tool along...
My mad scientist did pretty well in the game, though. If finding the biogenetic
secret of the were-penguin syndrome wasn't enough, he also discovered the Lost
City of the Ancients under the dormant volcano El Condor, began the mapping
of the Subways of the Gods, and got himself dealt into the reconstructed
Cocabananan government after a remarkably successful write-in election
campaign.
So I've had an enjoyable vacation, and am returning to work with renewed zest.
The Configure changes are done, and references to runtime-configurable switches
have been replaced by references to a new `site data block' which is filled
with compiled-in defaults but may be altered at startup time. I have written
and tested the code for the attribute-file scan.
I have dealt with almost all of the mail that had come in since last Wednesday.
Most notably, tytso@athena sent patches for rnews that enables a `demon' mode
(like repeated rnews -U runs). This avoid rnews's relatively high startup
overhead. He reports that it speeds up NNTP operation by a factor of 20 to 30.
Also, I have overhauled and much simplified expire based on some code he sent
to do recursive traverse of the article tree. As a result, the -h and -u
options are gone; their functions are now handled at no extra cost by -r. The
new code is also unfazed by a missing or garbled active file.
My next tasks are:
1) Rewrite the configure docs to reflect the new features and simplifications.
2) Ship the whole schmear over to my friendly neighborhood 4.3BSD site,
configure, make and test it.
I expect I'll get through 1 and about half of 2 today, and do the remainder
of 2 tomorrow. Of course, this means I won't have time to actually *read* any
news... :-)
--
Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
Email: eric@snark.uu.net CompuServe: [72037,2306]
Post: 22 S. Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718