Subject: c-client 2.3 frozen; 2.4 started

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 20:23:15 -0800 (PST)

Version 2.3 of the IMAP toolkit has been frozen.  It has, as of this writing,
no known bugs.  Besides bugfixes from 2.2 (frozen last October 26), 2.3 has
the following major features:
 . Implementation of the new mailbox naming rules in imap/Naming.TXT.  Note
   that these have tripped up a few people; so please read this document
   carefully.
 . Subscription management for mailboxes and bboards is now implemented.
 . The ``ms'' demo client supports the mailbox management features (create,
   delete, rename, subscribe, unsubscribe).
 . The IMAP server now supports PARTIAL fetching, and has a dummy for PURGE,
   making it fully IMAP2bis compliant.
 . Berkeley parser now handles 10 different formats of ``From '' line.
 . NNTP client implemented for Unix and for DOS.  The mailbox syntax is
    *[host]newsgroup
 . SUN-OS port has its own version of strstr(), since the one provided by SUN
   is buggy and extremely slow.

A full list is in imap/Updates.DOC.

- - - - -

The first version of 2.4 is now available; note that this is NOT a stable or
final version of 2.4!!

2.4 begins with an implementation of Kiss Of Death for Berkeley/mbox mailbox
streams.  If a process attempts to open a Berkeley mailbox that is already
open and locked read/write by another process, it will send a SIGUSR2 signal
as a ``kiss of death'' to the process which has it open.  If the other process
releases the mailbox within 15 seconds, the process sending the KOD will take
over the read/write lock.  This is intended to help the annoying ``mailbox
already open by another process, access is read-only'' condition when the
other process is an abandoned or lost imapd or Pine.

The action taken upon receipt of a KOD depends upon the main program.  At this
writing (8:40PM on February 16) only imapd has a KOD handler.  If it has been
more than 2 minutes since the last IMAP operation, imapd will relenquish the
read/write lock and go read-only on the stream.  imapd will continue to run
until its autologout timer (currently 30 minutes from the time of the last
IMAP operation) expires.

I'm not sure precisely what sort of action Pine will take when it gets a KOD,
but I'm sure the Pine UA folks will do something neat now that they're no
longer waiting on me.

It is also now possible in 2.4 to change a read/write stream into a readonly
stream.

If anyone using c-client is currently using SIGUSR2 for some other purpose,
please get in touch with me right away while there's still the opportunity to
go with some other mechanism.

Other items likely to go into subsequent edits of 2.4:
 . Disconnected operation extensions to IMAP2bis (more on this to come on the
    IMAP list)
 . Possible conversion of the tenex driver to not use much memory at all (at
    the expense of possible slower searches).
 . Possible mechanism to import a Berkeley mbox folder to DOS.
 . Support for smail-style `` remote from node'' suffix in mbox folders.
 . Possible support for the new SVR4 ``Content-Length'' header (this may be a
    problem since it could slow down Berkeley mbox parsing for everyone else).
 . Possible MMDF folder support.

-- Mark --

---

From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 21:20:04 -0800 (PST)

Just a small caveat for all interested parties:  the mailbox naming rules
and syntax decisions (e.g. [host]) should be considered work in progress,
and may well change.  Hopefully these issues will get nailed down in the
next two weeks.

-teg