apologies if this duplicates something, but *you* try searching for
"Mail" in the mail archive...
To submit the output of a gcc test run to the relevant mailing list, I'm enjoined
to run an obfuscated script and pipe the output to sh. Fine - but then it tells me
(actually, the docs said this already) that I need "the Mail program" in my
path. Not wanting to be obstructive or anything, but ... wot?
Grabbing the shell output and staring at it, there is indeed an executable called Mail (maybe just a script, of course) being invoked. I don't have it.
(a) am I seriously expected to search for the relevant package (whatever
it is) using "Mail" as the only key-word I know?
(b) "Mail" *is* the name of *one* package - it's a collection of PHP
scripts. I even have it amongst the packages of the thing which
used to be my distribution (now with so many bits replaced that
it's not useful to identify it). The only version of this I have found
is Mail-4.1.4, available as a source tarball (Mail-4.1.4.tar.gz).
It's a bunch of PHP scripts (not even marked as executable).
No instructions, no Makefile, no anything: and Mail.php has the
wrong name, even if I thought that invoking PHP made sense for
this purpose, which I don't, and even if I had PHP installed, which
I don't.
(c) I have not found (where does one stop?) any other package called,
precisely, "Mail".No other object with precisely this name is indexed in the UK academic mirror
(about the only good thing about the time I spent searching is that I discovered
and reported an indexing failure on their search system). It's not apparently
a GNU/FSF package: it's definitely not (under that recognisable name) in the
FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory.
.... h'mmm. Now, strangely enough, there *does* seem to be a package called GNU Mailutils, which even seems to contain a programme called 'mail' (sic). This even seems to have the right command-line options. But it's not called 'Mail', apparently.
.... collect, unpack, build, check... all there. Install. No, it's called 'mail', it
really is. Set up a symlink (I'm feeling desperate). Try running it. Now it
wants 'sendmail'. ExCUSE me! I need to have *sendmail* installed in order
to submit a test report? Perhaps more to the point, am I required to have
*configured* it? Am I dreaming? Or is the 'Mail' I should be using
something else entirely (quite possible)? Hello? Query? Wibble?
Could I have a hint? An anagram, maybe, or a cunningly-devised rebus as
a .png file? A set of cunningly-planted clues laid in as watermarks in a forthcoming
art-gallery catalogue? Something?
Bernard Leak.
bernard at brenda-arkle dot demon dot co in the uk
