[Pan-users] Re: ANN: Pan 0.90 "Sero Sed Serio"

[Jim Henderson]

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 11:16:20 -0500, Charles Kerr wrote:

> Pan 0.90, the first beta of a rewrite of Pan in C++, has been released. 
> It adds multiserver and nzb support, reduces memory use by over 66%, cuts
> the time to download new headers over 66%, and slashes the time it takes
> to load headers from disk by almost 90%.  For more information, see
> http://pan.rebelbase.com/.

Looks great, Charles!

A few things that popped up while I was working with it here:

1.  NNTP authentication not used unless server requires it (bug #333216 in
bugzilla) - I had reported this in the CVS 0.14.2 series (not in the
"released" version, which I currently use).  I had been previously
reported this in the 0.8 or 0.7 timeframe and it was fixed, but the fix
appears to not have been carried forward with the NNTP engine rewrite.

2.  With leafnode, I never can get a list of groups.  Not sure why yet -
debug output isn't helping much with this, though.  I can telnet to
localhost 119 and list the groups by hand fine, so it's not a leafnode
configuration issue.  (I figured leafnode would be a temporary workaround
to issue #1)

3.  In attempting to build the RPM, the "CREDITS" file is missing and that
prevents the RPM from building.  Easy workaround (create the file in the
source tree or remove the reference in the spec file) and it builds an RPM
properly.

4.  The spec file doesn't supercede older installed versions, but the RPM
does overwrite the installed pan executable in /usr/bin.  I know just
enough about building RPMs to be dangerous, so I'm not sure how to correct
this.  Since it creates a '.pan2' directory to store its files, perhaps
the binary should also be called 'pan2' so as to not conflict with the
earlier release (which should allow both to be run concurrently)?  The
package also could then be "pan2" rather than "pan" to avoid the conflict.

5.  As others indicated, a way to migrate existing settings from 0.14.x to
0.90 would be great.  Could this possibly be done using newsrc files?

Other than these issues (haven't had a chance to look at what I'm missing
from the prefs dialogue - I like being able to do my own colour-coding,
though), it looks good.  I like the new startup speed as well as the
improved memory handling and performance improvements.  Well done!

Jim