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MAILHELP(1)            DragonFly General Commands Manual           MAILHELP(1)


NAME

       maildist, mailhelp, maillist, mailpatch - mailagent's commands


SYNOPSIS

       maildist address system [ version ]
       mailhelp [ address ]
       maillist [ address ]
       mailpatch address system version patchlist


DESCRIPTION

       These commands are not intended to be run directly by a user. They may
       appear in any mail whose subject is set to Command. Such a mail will be
       processed by the mailagent(1), which will extract all lines beginning
       with @SH, followed by one of the above commands. The mailagent first
       sets environment variables that will be used by every commands.

       Maildist is used to mail a whole distribution to the given address. The
       version number may be omitted if the system has no version specified !!
       Maildist looks for the Spool/distribs file to find where the
       distribution is located. If it has been archived, the file name
       extension is used to guess how the archive will be restored:

       .cpio     archive is a cpio archive
       .tar      archive is in tar format
       .cpio.Z   compressed cpio archive
       .tar.Z    compressed tar archive

       Note that on file systems with short file names, the final .Z extension
       could be dropped. Therefore, compressed archives must be explicitly
       stated in the Spool/distribs file.

       Once the directory is found (or extracted), maildist looks for a
       .package file. If one is found, then it is assumed this distribution is
       under control of the dist 3.0 package, and the makedist commmand is
       called to actually mirror the source tree (makedist being part of dist
       3.0).

       Otherwise, it looks for a MANIFEST file. If it finds one, only the
       files listed therein will be sent. Otherwise, all the files will be
       sent, excepted the binary executables and object files, the RCS sub-
       directories or RCS files, the private U subdirectory and the .package
       file, any core file or files in a bugs subdirectory.

       Then, the following algorithm is used: if no RCS file is found, the
       file is sent as-is. Otherwise, we look for a defined 'lastpat' symbol.
       If it is found, the corresponding revision is checked-out and sent.
       Otherwise, the last-revision on the default branch is exctracted,
       provided that the corresponding working file is not found.

       The maildist command will not work if the system is tagged as an old
       one (with an o in the patches column of the distribs file). A message
       will be sent back to the user, explaining that only patches are
       available.

       Mailhelp sends help to the address (if omitted, the return path of the
       mail is used). The help text is found in Spool/agenthelp. It should
       have been correctly set in the installation procedure, as explained in
       the mailagent(1) manual page.

       Maillist sends the list of available distributions, with current
       patchlevels if necessary. The Spool/distribs and Spool/proglist files
       are both used to build the list.

       Mailpatch sends one or more patches for a maintained distribution. The
       directory or the archive is found by scanning Spool/distribs. The bugs
       sub-directory must then hold the available patches. The patches may be
       stored in compressed form (with the ending .Z), as mailpatch knows
       about them and will uncompress the patch before sending.

       Patches for old systems are kept in a separate directory, either in
       normal or in compressed form. If the version number of the old system
       is x.y, then the directory must be named bugs-x.y and placed in the
       root directory of the system, just like bugs is.

       Whenever the user asks for an old system, mailpatch inserts a little
       note giving the latest version number for that system.


NOTE

       For a more accurate description of these commands (user's point of
       vue), you may want to have a look at the help file or send help to
       yourself using the mailhelp command.


FORWARDING

       When the author of a package wishes to relinquish all maintenance duty,
       he is most often stuck by the weight of the past: Configure scripts
       have his e-mail address hardwired (see unit MailAuthor.U) and Command
       messages for package registration and/or patch requests will continue
       to reach him.

       The answer to that is to leave a .forward file at the top of the
       package tree and commands will automatically forge new requests and
       forward them to the address listed in the .forward file. Now the
       recipient surely needs a mailagent at the other end to deal with
       forwarded requests!

       Only plain e-mail address(es) are allowed in the .forward. The
       "|command" processing hook is not supported, since it's not sendmail
       which interprets that file but the command itself.

       Forwarding applies to maildist, mailpatch and package commands only.


FILES

       ~/.mailagent        configuration file for mailagent.
       /usr/local/lib/mailagent
                           directory holding templates and samples.
       Spool/agenthelp     help file
       Spool/distribs      distribution list
       Spool/proglist      comments for available distributions
       Spool/plsave        records patchlevel of archived distributions
       Log/agentlog        mailagent's log file


BUGS

       The proglist file ought to make a distinction between different
       versions of a same system.


AUTHOR

       Raphael Manfredi <Raphael_Manfredi@pobox.com>


SEE ALSO

       mailagent(1), package(1).

                                      ram                          MAILHELP(1)

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