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  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 If it  has  been  archived,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 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, 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 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 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/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)