SciFi <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on Mon, 25 Aug 2008
07:38:35 +0000:
> I am a GN customer [...]
>
> This much retention along with massive numbers of articles in the binary
> groups [...] are causing them to issue this warning:
>
> "Giganews is advising all Usenet client and NNTP software developers to
> adopt a 64–bit unsigned integer format for article numbering. [T]he
> first newsgroup to exceed this limit is anticipated to do so in about
> 200 days" [from 18–August–2008.]
>
> I bet this will also affect 'NZB' indexes [...]
>
> I wonder what is pan2's status w/r/t this? Shall I open a bug–report to
> track it (maybe already open)? (heh, hope my sign–on info still works
> there)
Just grepping the sources a bit, it looks like the article struct is
defined in a number of places as including unsigned long "number", so on
32-bit (IDK what long is on x86_64, but IIRC it's 32-bit as well?), it's
absolutely going to be a problem.
So yes, I'd file a bug.
I'd also get cracking on a patch, either providing one yourself if you
can, or if like me you're not a coder, consider asking your distribution
maintainer for help/suggestions. Charles definitely codes in spurts, and
while he recently took enough time to roll up a few bugs with patches
already filed, including newer gcc and glib compatibility patches and a
security patch, with 0.133, it was released nearly a year after 0.132,
and I've seen little indication (I'm running SVN head) that was more than
just a quick "minimal maintenance" mode update.
If that's true, there's no guarantee at all that Charles will get back to
pan and do anything at all about this by your deadline of ~February/
March. If a drop-in patch is supplied, the chances of having Charles
apply it and release are dramatically improved, and even if he doesn't,
once there's a patch attached to an "upstream" (for distributions) bug
that distributions can simply apply, they'll generally get it out there,
tho to get it in a shipped distribution will again take several months.
Thus, as I said, if you want it by February, especially if you don't
yourself compile from source, you better get cracking on getting
/somebody/ interested in it, yesterday if not sooner!
Presuming your not a coder (I'm not either), hopefully someone here that
is will take an interest.