*BSD News Article 55684


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From: ceharris@mal.com (Carl Harris)
Subject: ANNOUNCE: popclient 3.0 beta 5
Approved: peter@taronga.com
Sender: root@bonkers.taronga.com (Charlie Root)
Organization: Maladjusted Communications
Message-ID: <DIH9AL.2IJ@bonkers.taronga.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 1995 14:47:01 GMT
Lines: 161


Popclient version 3.0 beta 5 is now available at

	ftp://ftp.mal.com/pub/pop/popclient-3.0b5.tar.gz

(for those not blessed with gunzip, popclient-3.0b5.tar.Z is a normal
'compress' archive)

This is a BETA release of popclient version 3.  Little if any user 
support is provided for this version of popclient.  USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.  
Planned release date for the official 3.0 release is December 20, 1995 
(assuming no major problems are detected with this beta release).

This release fixes MANY problems encountered in compiling and using the
beta 4 release.  

YOUR FEEDBACK IS IMPORTANT TO ME.  It is quite difficult to make 
even a small package like popclient compile and run correctly on a
number of different platforms, especially when lots of new features
are added.  Without your feedback, I won't know what doesn't work for 
you.  Please mail your comments, bug reports, general gripes, and or 
heaps of praise ;) to me at <ceharris@mal.com>.

SunOS 4 USERS:  Since I don't have access to a SunOS 4 machine, support
for you is probably not complete.  Popclient may not even compile under
SunOS 4.  If someone wants to give me login access to a well-connected 
host running SunOS 4, I'll be more than happy to build-in the changes needed 
to make popclient work.

This release was tested (to varying degrees) to configure/compile/install 
correctly on the following platforms:

o	Digital UNIX 3.2c (cc).  gcc would probably work too, if the gcc
	fixincludes didn't insist on munging all of the system headers into 
        a completely unusable state.

o	DEC Ultrix 4.4 (gcc-2.6.3, cc) 

o	Linux 1.2.9 Slackware (gcc)

o	FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE (gcc). 

o	NetBSD/vax 1.0A (gcc).  It probably builds/runs cleanly on other
	ports, too.  It just so happens that my NetBSD/mac68k machine is
	dead at the moment, and my i386 machine is now running FreeBSD, so
	I can't test popclient with either of those (more widely used) ports.

o	NeXTSTEP/i386 (a.k.a. NeXT Mach) 3.2 (gcc).

o	Solaris 2.4 (a.k.a. SunOS 5.4) (gcc).

o	IBM AIX 3.2.5 (gcc-2.6.3, cc).  Ignore gcc warnings about problems 
	(that gcc's fixincludes created) in the wait.h include file.  Way 
        to go, gcc...

o 	HP-UX 9.1 (cc).  Ignore lex warning about not finding "message
	catalog," if it occurs.


Included in beta 5:
o	Fixed long standing bug in the detection and use of the alloca()
	function (required by the parser generated by bison).
	
o	Fixed problem with multiple Unix From headers when the --local/-o
	option is used.

o	Fixed problem on NeXT Mach caused by presence of termios.h 
	get tcgetattr() but absence of tcsetattr().

o	Many minor header file inclusion and other portability problems 
        fixed -- should improve compiler results on some previously 
        unsupported platforms.


What beta 5 DOES NOT include (but may be coming along real soon)

o       Daemon mode.  I've had to abandon this for the 3.0 release
        because of conflicts with a number of new (more important)
        features.  This _is_ coming in the 3.1 release.  I promise.
        Really.  I'm not kidding.  I swear.

o       A complete and up-to-date man page and info page.  The 
        man page included in this release reflects many (but not
        all) of the new features.  The man page and GNU-style info
        manual will be ready for the official 3.0 release.  

o       Support for multiple recipient pop retrieval.  Now investigating
        the use of a properly configured 'sendmail' to serve as the
        local delivery agent to deal with this situation.


Included in beta 4:
o       Fixes for the alloca problem reported by some Linux and 
        some SGI users.
        
o       Fixes for some goofy informational messages displayed 
        during normal retrieval.

Included in beta 3:

o	Support for retrieving only new messages from maildrop 
	when using POP 3.  This is now the default.  The --all 
	option may be used to override this behavior.  The --flush 
	options deletes old mail when new mail is retrieved.

o	Support for retrieving only the first n lines of a message
	(plus the message headers, of course), using the '--limit n'
        option.  --keep is implied by --limit, but can be overridden
	with --kill.

o	Support for APOP authentication (uses POP3 with MD5)
	Use 'configure -with-APOP' to include APOP support.

o	Provisional (and almost completely broken) support for
	the RPOP authentication protocol.  No further work will
	be done on this until some of the many security problems 
	it introduces are addressed.

o	Much improved input buffering in message receipt functions;
	makes a BIG difference in performance on slow SLIP/PPP 
	connections.

o	New command line options:  
	--limit n	limits received text of a message to no
			more than n lines (plus headers) when using
			POP3 (or the APOP/RPOP variants of POP3),
			leaving entire message untouched on server
			for complete download at a later time.
	--protocol s    allows selection of any of the supported
			protocols (POP2, POP3, APOP, IMAP (soon),
			RPOP (soon)).
	--all		used to force retrieval of all messages
			(both old and new) from the maildrop.
	--flush		used to delete old mail from maildrop
			before new mail is retrieved.

Included in beta 2:

o	Support for .poprc file -- see sample.poprc for details

o	GNU-style long options -- run popclient with no options
	for a rundown of all possible options.

o	fix for passwords appearing in 'ps' output.

o	support for multiple servers specified on one command line.


Included in beta 1:

o	GNU autoconfiguration

o	Long passwords (not limited by getpass() function in libc.a)

o	Underpinnings of support for IMAP protocol.

--
Carl Harris
EXECUTIVE Scapegoat
ceharris@mal.com
http://www.mal.com/~ceharris