How do you handle archiving sources?

[Kent Landfield]

In article <1990Nov20.070613.27034 at techbook.com> jamesd at techbook.com (James Deibele) writes:
>I'd like to make a lot of the sources I've acquired in alt.sources and the
>various comp.sources.* groups available in the near future.  However, none
>of the ways that I've come up with for presenting the files has particularly
>thrilled me.  So ...
>
>How do you handle archiving these groups?  Do you have a magic shell program
>that captures the detailed description to a file for closer examination? (I 
>would like to see all replacement gettys with an accurate one-line description,
>then based on the description, I'd like to be able to examine those detailed
>versions for one or two that caught my eye.)

I use rkive... :-) It can be found in any comp.sources.unix archives (such as
uunet) in volume19.

>How do you handle patches?  Do you apply them?  Or do you tar them up with
>the original distribution file?  Is there somebody who you think does this
>type of thing particularly well?

rkive supports the Auxiliary header "Patch-To:" that is used in a few of the
sources groups.  The Patch-To: line exists for articles that are patches
to previously posted software.  The Patch-To: line only appears in articles
that are posted, "Official", patches. The initial postings do not contain
the Patch-To: auxiliary header line.

Auxiliary Headers For Patch Postings:

     Submitted-by: Kent Landfield <kent at ssbell.UUCP>
     Posting-number: Volume 23, Issue 14
->   Patch-To: Volume 19, Issue 98-101
     Archive-name: rkive/patch1

There are two different types of handling with regards to patches.

 Package     - This type of archiving of patches places the patches
               in the same directory that the initial source was
               posted to.  This type of archiving is only available
               to newsgroup archives that are using Archive-Name
               archiving as well.

 Historical  - This type of archiving patches is done by sites that
               want to place the the patches in the volume/issue
               directory as specified by the moderator when the patch
               was initially posted.

Archive recognizes that the Patch-To: line indicates the article is
a patch.  For Archive-Name archiving which has specified "Package"
patches archiving in the configuration file, rkive puts the article
into the directory that contained the initial posting (volume19/rkive).
For Archive-Name that has not specified Package archiving or for
Volume/Issue archiving, the article would still be labeled as
volume23/rkive/patch01 or volume23/v23i014 respectively.

rkive also writes a .patchlog file in the BASEDIR for the newsgroup
that is used to track patches to originally posted software.  The
.patchlog is going to be used for email archive servers so that complete 
software packages (sources and patches) can be requested
from sites that do not use combined Archive-Name and Package archiving.

>
>What's particularly annoying for me are these little C programs that I've
>picked up --- they have the potential to be a life-saver for someone who
>needs that routine, but how do you make up a useful list of these things?

rkive generates an index file entry for each article that it archives. The
format of the log is up to the person who sets up the configuration file.
It works in much the same manner as printf... :-)

Take a look. It will probably save you a lot of time... :-)

			-Kent+

-- 
Kent Landfield                       INTERNET: kent at sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM
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