To: req@ccs.neu.edu
Subject: Perl 5.001 diffs & enhancements to "Req" 1.2.7 now available
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 22:02:27 -0700
From: Greg Earle <earle@netbsd4me.jpl.nasa.gov>

I have fixed my last known problem with my port of "Req" and "tkreq" to
Perl 5.001, so I have decided to make the diffs available.

You can obtain them via anonymous FTP from

        ftp://elroy.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/req_Perl5.001_diffs

(I would have posted them to the list, but they are about ~1000 lines and 25Kb,
 so I'll just put them up that way.  If you don't have Internet access, send
 me an e-mail and I'll e-mail them to you.)

The following assumptions are made therein:

- They are based on the top-level "req" 1.2.7 directory
- The diffs to "tkreq" (actually tkreq.def) assume you have "tkreq" 1.10,
  and that it is already installed in .../req-1.2.7/interfaces/tkreq-1.10
- These diffs assume that YOU ARE USING PERL 5.001.  They will NOT work with
  Perl 5.000!  REPEAT, they will NOT work with Perl 5.000!  Do *not* ask me
  about Perl 5.000, I don't run it and I will drop any questions into the
  bit-bucket if you're running Perl 5.000!

What features these diffs provide:

- Support for running "req" under Perl 5.001
- Support for assigning an "Area" to the "X-Request-Areas:" header field,
  and being able to additionally filter based on this Area field
- Support for building "req" under NetBSD (which is the O/S I use)

Here is a rundown of what is contained:

build/Makefile.def:

- Support for NetBSD: addition of an EXT_LIBS specifier (default: empty) so
  that one can additionally link with "-lcompat" on systems (4.4BSD-derived)
  which have "ftime()" moved into "libcompat"

- I gratuitously changed "@/bin/time" to "@/usr/bin/time" - NetBSD has it in
  "/usr/bin", and all other systems I know of besides HP-UX have it there too
  (I don't care about breaking HP-UX (-: )

utils/extract:

- Perl 5.001 fixes

interfaces/tkreq-1.10/tkreq.def:

- Support for setting and filtering based on "Area";  this field is appended
  to the header line "X-Request-Areas:".  The default values for "Area" that
  one can choose are (for lack of a better idea) "UNIX" and "VMS".  The
  filtering one can do by default is to filter on (a) UNIX; (b) !UNIX (Not
  UNIX); (c) VMS; (d) !VMS (Not VMS).  It should be obvious how to change the
  code to suit your own local needs for categories.  I added this functionality
  because my officemate handles all OpenVMS/VMS-related issues, and I really
  don't want to see any of them in my tkreq window.

src/q:

- Area header support
- Perl 5.001 fixes

src/req-mailgate:

- Perl 5.001 fixes

src/req-operation:

- Area header support
- Perl 5.001 fixes

src/req-nextnum.c:

- NetBSD support: Needs an extra include file (<sys/file.h>), and NetBSD has
  "lockf()", but not "flock()".  (I suspect other 4.4BSD-Lite based systems
  will also need this fix.)

src/req.1:

- Changed reference to "X-Request-Areas:" from "Currently unused" to a small
  description.

For obvious reasons, I would suggest that you unbundle a fresh req 1.2.7 src
tree into a private area, merge in tkreq 1.10 under "interfaces" and apply
the patches to this fresh tree.

What I am hoping is that Remy (or someone) will take all these little kludges
and actually come up with some *real* patches with correct/decent code to fix
these same things.  I'm no Perl hacker (nor a Tk hacker, either) and it shows.
I just tried to get things to work.

Enjoy.

        - Greg