[h-e-w] gnuserv maintenance

[Matthew X. Economou]

The sockets version of the gnuserv port to NT currently has no maintainer.  The 
version posted at http://www.wyrdrune.com/Files/gnuserv.zip is several years 
old, Edi Weitz does not have time to maintain the version on his web site 
(understandably enough), and no one has updated the port for Visual Studio 
.NET.  Unless anyone raises an objection, I will take over gnuserv's 
maintenance.  I plan on fixing the following bugs:
 
(1) gnuclientw exits immediately after sending the file to Emacs, i.e. "-q" is 
always set.
 
This flaw is shared by the mailslots version of gnuserv/NT.  Apparently, the 
original porter defined "-q" to always be active for the Win32 application 
version of gnuclient.  This breaks programs such as the Zope ExternalEditor 
client which wait for the child editor process to exit before performing some 
function (i.e. the gnuclientw process exits immediately so the caller thinks 
nothing was edited).
 
(2) The connection between gnuclient/gnuclientw and gnuserv closes after 300 
seconds.
 
Exactly 300 seconds after gnuclient sends a file to gnuserv, the socket 
connection closes and gnuclient exits.  I do not yet know why this happens.  
The mailslot version does not exhibit this flaw.  Again, this breaks programs 
that wait for the editor sub-process to exit before performing some function on 
the edited file, e.g. ExternalEditor.
 
I plan on making the following changes:
 
(1) Update the sources to build on Visual Studio .NET.
 
I don't want to bother with (a) finding my VC6 discs or (b) converting the 
project every time I open it.  Besides, it's time to lay VC6 to rest.
 
(2) Merge the mailslot version.
 
(I don't know if there is a maintainer for the mailslot version of gnuserv.  I 
also don't purport to understand how the mailslot version works.)
 
Since not every Windows computer is a single-user workstation, and since I 
don't want to tackle the problem of authenticating and securing the socket 
connections (which requires changes to the Unix version of gnuserv), I would 
like to, at some point, merge the socket and mailslot versions of gnuserv, so 
users have the option of running a version of gnuserv that cannot be accessed 
over the network or loopback interfaces.
 
(3) Put everything under CVS.
 
I am a version control freak.
 
(4) Set up an issue tracker.
 
I have a Plone site that I could use, or I could set up bugzilla or something 
else.  Maybe I'll host this all on Sourceforge or something.
 
(5) Re-write the gnuserv documentation.
 
Two out of date readme files, the old Unix man page, and a crufty HTML copy of 
the man page do not quality documentation make.  A couple hundred lines of 
generally uncommented source code are not documentation either.
 
I have no schedule for any of this, but if you have some changes you want made, 
just email me or post here and I will do my best.
 
Best wishes,
Matthew