Re: nmh-1.8-RC2 issues

[David Levine]

DaveF wrote:

> I have built RC2 on my Gentoo Linux system. It mostly works. The tests all
> pass.

Thanks!

> However. I have noticed that in 1.7.1 etc/mhn.defaults.sh searches for
> external programs par and fmt and iconv. If it finds them it outputs
> entries for, eg. mhbuild-convert-text:
> which use said programs in the pipeline.
>
> In 1.8-RC2 the programs are searched for and shell variables textfmt and
> charsetconv  are assigned assigned accordingly, but the shell variables are
> not used so the programs are not used in the processing pipelines.

There is some unused code in there.  (I don't think charsetconv
has ever been used.)  The helper applications have evolved over time.
The use of par/fmt in the mhbuild-convert-text directives turned out
to not be necessary.  The resulting mhn.defaults from 1.7.1 and 1.8 RC2
should be similar otherwise.

> Is this a deliberate decision or a regression?  If it is a deliberate decision
> it should probably be documented in the NEWS and/or Changelog.

The ChangeLog does capture these changes, though maybe not explicitly.
I don't think the raw changes are significant enough to be called out in
NEWS.

> Also, while rummaging about I noted that nmh-1.8-RC2/SPECS/nmh.cygport 
> contains
> VERSION=1.7
> RELEASE=2
>
> Don't know if it is relevant, but it seems anomalous.

Yeah, that's an example.  I don't know if cygport supports shell
expansion, if it does it could be changed to resemble nmh.spec.
I'll try to look at some point.

David