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  If  it  has  been  archived, the file name extension is used to guess how the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 command 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/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)