MAILHELP(1)                                                   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 ommitted if the system has no version speci-
       fied !!  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 If it  has  been  archived,  the  file  name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
       explicitely 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, pro-
       vided 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 ommitted, 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 your-
       self 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 for-
       ward 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/share/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)