BSD 4_3 development

[unix-history] / usr / contrib / rn / README

			Rn Kit, Version 4.3

		    Copyright (c) 1985, Larry Wall

You may copy the rn kit in whole or in part as long as you don't try to
make money off it, or pretend that you wrote it.
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Please read all the directions below before you proceed any further, and
then follow them carefully.  Failure to do so may void your warranty. :-)

After you have unpacked your kit, you should have all the files listed
in MANIFEST.

Installation

1)  Run Configure.  This will figure out various things about your system.
    Some things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will
    ask you about.  It will then proceed to make config.h, config.sh, Makefile,
    and a bunch of shell scripts.  It will also do a make depend for you.
    You might possibly have to trim # comments from the front of Configure
    if your sh doesn't handle them, but all other # comments will be taken
    care of.

2)  Glance through config.h and common.h to make sure system dependencies
    are correct.  Most of them should have been taken care of by running
    the Configure script.

    If you have any additional changes to make to the C definitions, they
    can be done in the Makefile, in config.h, or in common.h.  If you have
    strange mailboxes on your system you should modify mbox.saver to correctly
    append an article to a mailbox or folder.

    If you are on a machine with limited address space, you may have to
    remove some of the special functions of rn to make it fit.  This is
    easily done by undefining symbols in the System Dependencies section
    of common.h.  You should run "make depend" again to be safe.

3)  make

    This will attempt to make rn in the current directory.

4)  make install

    This will put rn, newsetup, newsgroups, Pnews, and Rnmail into a public
    directory (normally /usr/local/bin), and put a number of files into the
    private rn library (normally /usr/lib/news/rn).  It will also try to put
    the man pages in a reasonable place.

5)  Read the manual entry before running rn.  It's quite different from
    readnews.

6)  Install the Xref patch to header.h, header.c, and inews.c.  These patches
    are found in header.h.?.pat, header.c.?.pat, and inews.c.?.pat, where ? is
    either 1 for news 2.10.1 (or earlier) or 2 for 2.10.2.  Last I heard,
    2.10.3 was going to have the Xref patch built in.  The purpose
    of the Xref patch is to put an Xref: line in the header of articles
    posted to more than one newsgroup.  Rn uses this line to keep from showing
    such postings more than once.  Other than that rn will work without
    this patch, so if you just want to try out rn you can delay putting in
    the patch.

    When you put in the patch and recompile inews, don't forget to define
    DOXREFS in the makefile for inews.  Do NOT define LINKART unless you
    are a Eunice site and really want to do that.  In fact, if you are not
    a Eunice site you needn't install the LINKART part of the patch.

    NOTE: the Makefile that comes with some of the older news systems does not
    have all the dependencies quite right.  In particular, ifuncs.c may
    not recompile when you change header.h.  If this happens when you install
    the Xref patch, inews will start dumping core.  Make sure both inews.o
    and ifuncs.o depend on header.h in the Makefile.

    Eunice users: the inews.c patch contains both the Xref patch and a LINKART
    patch to put a form of "symbolic link" between articles posted to
    multiple newsgroups.  What it does is to put the article into the first
    newsgroup on the Newsgroups line, and in subsequent newsgroups it just
    puts a little file containing the name of the article in the first
    newsgroup.  Rn (when compiled with the LINKART option) is clever about
    these pseudo-articles, and ends up opening the right one.  YOU WILL NOT
    be able to use readnews or vnews on your system without modification,
    though.  If you do this, be sure to define both DOXREFS and LINKART in
    the makefile for inews.c.  If you are using the option in inews that
    copies instead of linking, you will want to rip that out.

    NOTE: if you transmit articles to other systems using xfernews with the
    U flag, Xref's can leak out of your system, as can Date-Received's.  This
    may make neighboring sites unhappy unless they also have the Xref patch
    installed.  For now, either don't use the U flag, or fix the inews/xfernews
    interaction.

7)  Try rn, and play with some of the switches.  You may want to make -/
    default on your system.  This is done in common.h.  You may want to modify
    which header lines are displayed by default--this is done in head.h.

    To change default values of enviroment variables on a system-wide basis
    without recompiling rn, put switches into file INIT in the rn library.

8)  IMPORTANT!  Help save the world!  Communicate any problems and
    suggested patches to me, lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall), so we can
    keep the world in sync.  If you have a problem, there's someone else
    out there who either has had or will have the same problem.

    If possible, send in patches such that the patch program will apply them.
    Context diffs are the best, then normal diffs.  Don't send ed scripts--
    I've probably changed my copy since the version you have.

    Watch for rn patches in net.sources.bugs.  Patches will generally be
    applyable (is that a word?) by the patch program.  If you are just
    now bringing up news and aren't sure how many patches there are, write
    to me and I'll send any you don't have.

9)  If you are going to hack on rn, please read the HACKERSGUIDE first.