[comp.archives] [news.software.b...] C News patch of 16-Mar-1991

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (03/18/91)

Archive-name: news/c-news/c-news/1991-03-17
Archive: ftp.cs.toronto.edu:/pub/c-news/c-news.tar.Z [128.100.3.6]
Original-posting-by: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Original-subject: C News patch of 16-Mar-1991
Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN)

This again is the first of a set, which should appear within the next week.
The members of the set are interrelated to some extent, and installing one
without the others voids your warranty. :-)  Turned out we had rather more
than one patch worth of stuff built up.

README changed to include FTP instructions; COPYRIGHT changed to include
important acknowledgement (not really a copyright issue, but we had to put
it *somewhere*, and COPYRIGHT is where the authors are named...).  Batchsplit
estimates size of ihave/sendme batches more accurately.  Build takes -r
option to suppress rewriting defaults file.  Warnings about dbz/dbm file
incompatibility made louder.  Build uses sed rather than ed to avoid some
unportabilities.  Dbz default hash-table density reduced in an attempt to
avoid files with holes in them.  dbzcancel() added to provide better for
dbz-using programs that fork().  Dbz now does unbuffered i/o when compiled
for B News, to minimize problems with B News's inadequate locking.  Dbz
rebuild does not shrink the hash table when it is relatively new, to avoid
startup transients which have bothered many people.  Doexpire removes
history.o before checking space, since it's about to be removed anyway
and it can be large.  Expire "stretches" defaults so that an explicit
expiry date is not rejected for being outside the /bounds/ defaults.
Histdups fixed not to emit an empty line if there is no input, which
made addmissing choke.  Histinfo and histslash made more robust, avoiding
problems with really trashed files that could cause core dumps from
mkhistory and addmissing.  Mkhistory fixed to include only top-level
directories, not top-level files (which cannot be articles).  Cunbatch
added to NEWSBIN/input for convenience when giving HDB/BNU uucp full
pathnames.  Input subsystem gets tagging of files by type (which avoids
a multitude of bugs and inefficiencies) and grade (not used yet, but
potentially available to assign priorities to input); extensive revisions
to regression test to match, including a fix for a timing bug that could
make the test spuriously fail on fast machines.  Newsrun punts to server
for whole run rather than each relaynews.

NOTE AN INCOMPATIBILITY:  newsrun will no longer try applying c7decode
to a non-type-tagged input, so c7encoded input had better come in through
newsspool to get tagged properly.  Almost nobody uses c7encoded format
anyway, and this saves hassles.

start of patch 16-Mar-1991
(suggested archive name: `pch16Mar91.Z')
this should be run with   patch -p0 <thisfile

The following is a complete list of patches to date.

--- PATCHDATES	Sat Mar 16 21:46:45 1991
***************
*** 1,23 ****
--- 1,24 ----
  23-Jun-1989
  7-Jul-1989
  23-Jul-1989
  22-Aug-1989
  24-Aug-1989
  14-Sep-1989
  13-Nov-1989
  10-Jan-1990
  16-Jan-1990
  17-Jan-1990
  18-Jan-1990
  12-Mar-1990
  14-Apr-1990
  15-Apr-1990
  16-Apr-1990
  25-May-1990
  1-Sep-1990
  7-Sep-1990
  1-Dec-1990
  12-Dec-1990
  13-Dec-1990
  14-Dec-1990
  15-Dec-1990
+ 16-Mar-1991

Changed files, if any:

*** cnpatch/old/COPYRIGHT	Sat Mar 16 21:46:51 1991
--- COPYRIGHT	Sat Mar 16 21:30:40 1991
***************
*** 1,6 ****
  /*
!  * Copyright (c) University of Toronto 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990.
   * All rights reserved.
   * Written mostly by Geoffrey Collyer and Henry Spencer.
   * This software is not subject to any license of the American Telephone
   * and Telegraph Company, the Regents of the University of California, or
--- 1,8 ----
  /*
!  * Copyright (c) University of Toronto 1985-1991 and years between.
   * All rights reserved.
   * Written mostly by Geoffrey Collyer and Henry Spencer.
+  * Our thanks to UUNET Communications Services Inc for financial support.
+  *
   * This software is not subject to any license of the American Telephone
   * and Telegraph Company, the Regents of the University of California, or

*** cnpatch/old/README	Sat Mar 16 21:46:53 1991
--- README	Sat Mar  2 16:40:23 1991
***************
*** 1,3 ****
! This is C News, superseding assorted preliminary releases.  28 Oct 1990
  
  C News is a reimplementation of the transport and storage subsystems of the
--- 1,3 ----
! This is C News, superseding assorted preliminary releases.  16 Jan 1991
  
  C News is a reimplementation of the transport and storage subsystems of the
***************
*** 180,183 ****
--- 180,190 ----
  decvax, floyd, hoptoad, kitty, linus, mnetor, pyramid, suncan, utai, utgpu,
  watmath, or yunexus).
+ 
+ The current C News distribution can currently always be retrieved by
+ anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.toronto.edu in file pub/c-news/c-news.Z (a shell
+ archive) or pub/c-news/c-news.tar.Z (a tar archive) and the complete set
+ of patches can also be found on ftp.cs.toronto.edu in the directory
+ pub/c-news/patches.  FTP during our peak hours (12h00-17h00 Eastern) is
+ not encouraged.
  
  					Geoff Collyer

[1600+ lines deleted, plus a few edits..  --Ed.]