Mail. Mail! Mail?
Dear List, apologies if this duplicates something, but *you* try searching for "Mail" in the mail archive... To submit the output of a gcc test run to the relevant mailing list, I'm enjoined to run an obfuscated script and pipe the output to sh. Fine - but then it tells me (actually, the docs said this already) that I need "the Mail program" in my path. Not wanting to be obstructive or anything, but ... wot? Grabbing the shell output and staring at it, there is indeed an executable called Mail (maybe just a script, of course) being invoked. I don't have it. (a) am I seriously expected to search for the relevant package (whatever it is) using "Mail" as the only key-word I know? (b) "Mail" *is* the name of *one* package - it's a collection of PHP scripts. I even have it amongst the packages of the thing which used to be my distribution (now with so many bits replaced that it's not useful to identify it). The only version of this I have found is Mail-4.1.4, available as a source tarball (Mail-4.1.4.tar.gz). It's a bunch of PHP scripts (not even marked as executable). No instructions, no Makefile, no anything: and Mail.php has the wrong name, even if I thought that invoking PHP made sense for this purpose, which I don't, and even if I had PHP installed, which I don't. (c) I have not found (where does one stop?) any other package called, precisely, "Mail". No other object with precisely this name is indexed in the UK academic mirror (about the only good thing about the time I spent searching is that I discovered and reported an indexing failure on their search system). It's not apparently a GNU/FSF package: it's definitely not (under that recognisable name) in the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory. h'mmm. Now, strangely enough, there *does* seem to be a package called GNU Mailutils, which even seems to contain a programme called 'mail' (sic). This even seems to have the right command-line options. But it's not called 'Mail', apparently. collect, unpack, build, check... all there. Install. No, it's called 'mail', it really is. Set up a symlink (I'm feeling desperate). Try running it. Now it wants 'sendmail'. ExCUSE me! I need to have *sendmail* installed in order to submit a test report? Perhaps more to the point, am I required to have *configured* it? Am I dreaming? Or is the 'Mail' I should be using something else entirely (quite possible)? Hello? Query? Wibble? Could I have a hint? An anagram, maybe, or a cunningly-devised rebus as a .png file? A set of cunningly-planted clues laid in as watermarks in a forthcoming art-gallery catalogue? Something? Bernard Leak. bernard at brenda-arkle dot demon dot co in the uk
Re: Mail. Mail! Mail?
References: <427E8378.1010309 at brenda-arkle dot demon dot co dot uk><873bsxbclc.fsf at codesourcery dot com><20050508225133.GA2890 at dementia dot proulx dot com><87r7gh9tmq.fsf at codesourcery dot com> Apologies if this has lost its "References" field - it shouldn't have done, but off-hand I can't work out how to verify it. Hence the line above (with mildly obfuscated addresses) My system has developed, for hysterical reasons, as a minimal installation of GNU/Linux on a P4. Minimal really was minimal - no networking, no X... Everything else has been added on demand. I managed to get my networking running with no problems without ever encountering mail, Mail, mailx, or any version of sendmail. Don't blame the distribution - but surely I'm not alone in my position? Nice as it is to know that "mailx" is what I wanted, and it is easily available, the docs didn't say "mailx", they said "Mail". "Mail" was unhelpful (I wasn't helped), and "mail" would not have been better. And, yes, I was misconstruing "sendmail" as referring to the Configuration Monster from Hell. Doubtless "an experienced Unix person" would not have been in this position, but that's not a great deal of help to me. Zack and Bob, however, *have* been helpful (thanks to both of you!), and in my darker and more cynical moments I suspect them of being experienced Unix persons themselves. The mere absence of Mail/sendmail wasn't the essence of my problem. A solution "by hand" was still possible. When feeding the script output to `sh' failed, I could (and did) spool it to a file instead, from which I could extract the inline data. The difficulty was rather that I couldn't find what executables I was expected to be using. This in turn introduced an unnecessary element of guesswork into the solution "by hand", which was bothering me. I didn't want to be sending junk to the mailing list. Now I know what I'm supposed to have been doing, the rest is relatively straightforward. Special system restrictions may make it impracticable to install the expected tools, but this is really a red herring. Can something be done to make the problem less obstructive? It's not obvious that the script should try to be too clever and work out which name to use. Mail looks as useful as any name it can have hard-coded. However, a comment could be added to the script *output*; something like if ! [ -x "`which Mail`" ]; then echo Modify the script, or set up a symlink, to use \`mailx\' echo if \`Mail\' doesn\'t exist: mailx and \`Mail\' should be echo synonyms. If neither is present, \`mail\' might work. echo mail from GNU mailtools should work. exit fi if ! [ -x /usr/sbin/sendmail ]; then echo This script may fail if \`/usr/sbin/sendmail\' is not available, echo depending on the version of \`Mail\' being used. echo This is NOT the very large MTA whose home is at echo http://www.sendmail.org. echo You may need to set up a symlink to an equivalent program. echo mail.remote from GNU mailtools should work. fi and it can be mentioned in the docs: something like You must have Mail in your path: Mail is (or can be made to be) an alias for mailx, which you should have. This requires /usr/sbin/sendmail, which is NOT the huge MTA from http://www.sendmail.org but something much smaller. GNU mailutils include versions of both, which will need to be renamed/linked. -- "Before they made me, they broke the mould" Bernard Leak
Re: Mail. Mail! Mail?
's already documented somewhere accessible, please tell me (and maybe refer to it in the GCC documentation!). "Grope around in the Debian distribution using their search tool" is a usable solution, but not what I would call adequate documentation. "Run and find out" is a good response in many cases, but this does not apply to "Mail", because (go back to Start, do not pass "Go", do not collect £200, rinse and repeat). "You ought to have this already" is an expression of astonishment, rather than a suggestion (though one may infer from it that looking again harder might help - in my case, it didn't). "You ought to know this already" is merely a slap in the face. Yours in the ranks of death (but not before), Bernard Leak. -- "Before they made me, they broke the mould."
Re: Mail. Mail! Mail?
Dear List, Jonathan Wakely wants me to send a patch (or more than one). >Send a patch. Will do, after some further digging and sanity-testing, along the lines I have already indicated. Did you expect it already? I have to consider that not all builds of GCC are on UN*X-type boxes. The existing machinery for submitting test results is rather non-portable: I don't want to do anything to make it worse. >This isn't GCC's problem. No it (was) mine - but it was a problem with GCC. I'm considering how GCC can be modified to help, so it doesn't become somebody else's problem. Most of the difficulty is not best dealt with in GCC, but I think some of it is. >Send a patch I've already sent a suggestion to O'Reilly fpr the next edition of "Linux in a Nutshell". I'm thinking what can be done by way of producing a one-stop shop for nasty aliases and homonyms (libxml=gnome-xml and all the others) to go in the LDP. Any other bright ideas? Or can someone point me to where it has all been done before? Bernard Leak -- "Before they made me, they broke the mould"
Gosh, GCC 3.4.6 does so exist...
Dear List, the release announcements for the 3.4 series seem to be in trouble. Maybe I'm missing something subtle, but I think that the latest release is 3.4.6 (just out, the very latest GCC release as I write, on 2006/03/10), and this should be reflected in the release list at http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-3.4/ . Correspondingly, the link to this page on http://gcc.gnu.org/ should have its anchor updated from 'GCC 3.4.5' to 'GCC 3.4.6'. For a while I thought that the mention of 3.4.6 on the next line was a mere typo. The mirrors do seem to be up-to-date (which is just as well). Bernard Leak
Gosh, GCC 3.4.6 does so exist...
Dear List, do you all remember this? Look back to http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2006-03/msg00759.html if your memory needs to be jogged. One month and a few hours on... has anything changed? Is Gabriel Dos Reis still looking into this, or has he been hit by a bus? Bernard Leak -- A man who saved his employer millions by only catching '1's in the bit bucket
Re: Gosh, GCC 3.4.6 does so exist...
Dear List,
Dave Korn wrote
Well, at least the front page of gcc.gnu.org is now self-contradictory:
" Previous release series: GCC 3.4.5 (released 2005-11-30)
Branch status: GCC 3.4.6 is the last release from the 3.4 series; the
branch has been closed after the release. "
Not unless "now" means something unexpected.
I pointed out this discrepancy in my original message:
Correspondingly, the link to this page on http://gcc.gnu.org/
should have its anchor updated from 'GCC 3.4.5' to 'GCC 3.4.6'.
For a while I thought that the mention of 3.4.6 on the next
line was a mere typo.
Yours bemusedly,
Bernard Leak
Gosh, GCC 3.4.6 does so exist...
Dear List, do you all remember this? Look back to http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2006-03/msg00759.html if your memory needs to be jogged. two months and a few hours on... has anything changed? Is Gabriel Dos Reis still looking into this, or has he been hit by a bus? Bernard Leak -- Thinking of making this message a monthly cron job
Re: [wwwdocs] RE: Gosh, GCC 3.4.6 does so exist...
Dear List. my, that's good to have sorted. The prospect of having to start crond in my init scripts was truly frightening. Thanks, all! Bernard Leak -- Still fighting the good fight. Fights are good when I win them.
