This file contains a summary of changes made in various versions of SmartList up to and including the latest snapshot. It is derived from the HISTORY file that is included in source distributions. The latest snapshot can be found at http://www.procmail.org/SmartList-snapshot.tar.gz or ftp://ftp.procmail.org/pub/procmail/testing/SmartList-snapshot.tar.gz. The currently available snapshot was created on Sat Aug 25 04:47:06 2001 GMT and is 88683 bytes in size. The MD5 checksum/fingerprint/signature/digest value for the current snapshot is dd82117d7e16dc385411f52fce810d74.

If you give the snapshot a try it would help development immensely if you could email me a short note describing your system and how well it's working.

1993/02/04: v2.80

Started using CVS to manage the source (god's gift to programmers)

1993/02/19: v2.81

1993/06/02: v2.82 (never really released, was only available as prerelease 4)

1993/07/01: v2.90

1993/07/02: v2.91

Corrected the SHELL=/bin/shell assignment in install.sh

Made install.sh check if procmail was compiled without "#define console"

Stripping off leading "From " lines now before passing mails through the mailinglist

1994/06/14: v3.00

Cleaned up install.sh* for the mailinglists: starting su with commands on stdin, checking some permissions now in the filesystem to prevent silly mistakes during the installation

v2.91 archive server logged into the wrong file (../log), fixed

Made the x_command script list the nearest match when adding or removing people from a list

New x_command directive: checkdist

New convenience command: donatelist

Fixed a few typos that slipped into procbounce and flush_digests

Explicit support for moderated lists

Eliminating duplicate submissions

Catering for autoreplies to people not on the accept list

Flush_digests can now be forced to push out digests

Made the generated digests MIME compliant

Clipped an a bit too greedy -request-redirection-regexp in rc.submit

Implicit subscription can be enabled (force_subscribe in rc.custom)

You can create a subscreen script to screen the addresses of prospective subscribers (allows tighter control)

Tuned the procbounce script (it does what I mean now and it got more verbose in its diagnostics)

Taught procbounce about the more information deprived bounce messages (it can handle almost every bounce now)

Changes to the arch_retrieve script:

• allow the archive directory to be a symbolic link itself
• friendlier help command
• allow searching for regexps
• protect the user against all too eager wildcards
• fixed the ls command (one mail back per command)
• made it more intelligent with respect to ignoring signatures
• the standalone archive server will include the contents of the optional help.txt and info.txt files on a help request
• raise the breakoff_search limit
• allow the most common flags on egrep

Carbon copies of subscription requests contained misleading diagnostics

Subscription notifications will be done to both the sender and the new subscriber (in case the addresses differ)

Fixed the problem of sometimes subscribing "please"

Educated subscribe about some caveats when extracting the subscription addresses from the signatures

Provided for standard hooks where people can plug in their semi-permanent local customisations in the rcfiles

Split off the mailinglist scripts in a separate package called "SmartList"

Flist recognises itself as flist if argv[0] starts with `flist'

Install.sh now tries to preset rc.init.new with values for PATH, domain and listmaster (if you are upgrading)

Rc.submit will add a To: field to outgoing mails if there wasn't any

Mail to digested lists will be automatically reposted on the undigested list (if any)

Provided for an alt_sendmail variable in rc.init, to switch between the two sendmail invocations

Adding the X-Diagnostic: Unprocessed if no further processing seems to have taken place

Moved the idcheck functionality into formail -D (due to popular demand)

Use the setid program instead of su while installing (does away with those "inexplicable" installation problems)

Weed out duplicate Date: fields before resending mails

Created choplist, the dist-file expander

Created cronlist, the new recommended script to put in the crontab entry (instead of flush_digests directly)

Allow for carbon copies to the maintainer of unsubscription requests

Documented and slightly changed the behaviour of the digest.admin administrivia files

If possible, the lists are now installed relative to the home directory of the `list' account

Install the examples directory to .examples

Fixed the automatic archive history truncation for digests, they previously were not truncated at all

Flist -v displays information about the currently installed version of SmartList

Extracted the hardcoded help from the archive server into the archive.txt file

Changed procbounce to send a final unsubscription message to people that were taken off the list due to too many bounces

Allow reply_to to override the Reply-To: field in the digest

Support for default help text responses

Allow for unsubscription assistance

Full blown MIME support for the archive server (binary files, arbitrary length, autosplitting, full MIME-encapsulation)

The archive server understands the "version" command

1994/06/15: v3.01

v3.00 didn't react to plain (un)subscribe requests

Installation as non-root had problems finding the right directory

1994/06/16: v3.02

Modifications to the archive server:

• support the MIME dir="" and name="" parameters
• force it to sleep between sending files (lowers load)
• only queue sent files, then flush the queue (lowers load)

Modifications to multigram:

• Strip leading or trailing unbalanced "'s from mailaddresses

The installation makes the scripts in .examples executable

This version of flist -v erroneously displayed v3.01

1994/06/30: v3.03

Laid out the requirements for MIME support in the Manual

Modifications to the archive server:

• fix a typo in mimencap for the fallback Content-Type: field
• work around a bug in mimencode
• change the dir= attribute to directory=
• also support the planned Content-Disposition: field (for naming files)
• propagate the SHELL variable to any sub-procmails we run

Updated some misleading comments in rc.submit

1994/08/02: v3.04

Changes to mimencap.local:

• Added support for the most recent MIME types
• Change the format of the Content-ID field to be RFC822 conforming

Arch_trunc didn't work quite as expected (somewhere around v2.92pre10 this went wrong), and didn't truncate the archive at all

Install.sh3 now prompts before overwriting mimencap.local

Install.sh3 now generates diffs between rc.init files and tries to patch rc.init.new upon installation

Allow submissions with "Precedence: junk"

Inserted the missing newline for reply_to in digests

Put the contents of a digest in an extra MIME message

1994/08/04: v3.05

No real changes, just to synchronise versions with procmail

Most notably, formail v3.04 could cause problems on some machines where sendmail does not remove the leading From_ line on mail being forwarded

1994/08/30: v3.06

Removed the auto-encoding from mimencap.local, it was already (and better) done in mimencap itself

Multigram truncates the dist file after unsubscribing someone (if the OS supports it, that is)

Some new example files in the example directory

Insert some appropriate Reply-To's in the archive server, in order to prevent people from replying to archive server mails

Typo fixed in comments in rc.init

Return the body of the mail as well if the person was not on the accept list

Improved fuzzy search for explicit mail addresses in the subscription request

1994/10/31: v3.10

Changes to rc.submit:

• Moved the accept.txt in front of the body of the mail
• The initial submission of force subscribed people was lost, fixed

Make use of the -z option of formail, get rid of the leading blank in the dist file for new subscriptions

Arch_retrieve log format changed, included timestamps

Standalone archive servers sometimes choked when receiving many requests simultaneously, fixed

X-Command mails can unsubscribe anyone from a dist file, even if the address is above the `magic' line

New flag in rc.custom: auto_unsubscribe

New shell script: "led", it should be used to edit any SmartList governed file (does locking and attribute checks automatically)

If no Message-ID could be recovered from a bounced message, procbounce always picked the same hashkey, fixed

Binary files requested through the archive server got spurious newlines appended at the end, fixed

Multigram can take optional multiple filenames now

An optional second accept file "accept2"

Procbounce ignores lines starting with [1-4][0-9][0-9] (transient failures)

Choplist supports kernels that don't support the #! hack

Subscribing third parties was impossible in v3.06, fixed

Forgot to export PATH in the cronlist example

Put in support to recognise the default domain for the accept list and force_subscribe flag

Allow multigram to really display multiple matches (so that the checkdist and unsub_assist features finally work as intended)

Tuned the multigram match values a bit, to improve the signal to noise ratio for typical mail addresses

Mails that did not have a Return-Path: or Reply-To: field were not replied to correctly (regression bug since v3.06), fixed

1995/05/17: v3.11pre3

Cc_unsubrequests and cc_requests had some undesirable side-effects

Procbounce reported spurious errors if badly formatted bounces were received

Make use of the more readable "variable ?? y" wherever feasible

New rc.custom variable "divertcheck"

Flist will now bounce the mail instead of trying anyway if it has insufficient privileges

Forgot to check the reject list if force_subscribe was used

Changes to the arch_retrieve script:

• Requests to egrep without providing at least one filename prohibited processing the rest of the commands in the mail
• New command quit or exit to prohibit interpreting the rest of the mail
• Eliminated the ${:+} construct, old shells complained

Procbounce ignores 0xx SMTP reply codes as well now

Some shells don't grok [!/], worked around this in install.sh

Changed renaming From_ to X-Envelope-From: to X-From_:

Made the default help.txt a bit more explicit

Changes to multigram:

• Eliminated lots of system calls during fuzzy matching (basically a speedup)

The Solaris 2.3 grep doesn't accept -e options, caused a minor glitch in createlist

Provide examples/rc.local.r00 sample for X-Command fields in the body

Mask out Read-Receipt-To field on mails going through

The Approved field on moderated lists was not checked strictly enough

Handle addresses with embedded newlines

Third party subscriptions didn't send subscribe.files to the new subscriber

If someone (accidentally) removes the dist file, the subscribe script will recreate an empty one (and log a warning)

1995/10/29: v3.11pre4

Changes to multigram:

• Account for compilers with sizeof(off_t)>sizeof(long)

Get rid of X-Confirm-Reading-To: fields on submissions

Deal more gracefully with those superverbose smail error mails

Forced subscriptions on moderated lists didn't work too well

Include author name in digest topic summaries

Use the -odi option to sendmail to improve control of the load

1997/04/28: v3.11pre7

Changes to multigram:

• Work around a DomainOS compiler bug

Createlist didn't work well if $HOME was set wrong

Spurious "attempt" unsubscribe notices that were more than just attempts

1999/03/02: v3.12

donatelist now does the chmod g+s after the chown

Recognize more queue warning messages

Obtain the SmartList version number directly from patchlevel.h

Concatenate the header and body in a more efficient manner

Changes to multigram:

• Correctly locate '@' in addresses to look for `close' domains
• choplist wasn't counting addresses correctly

1999/03/31: v3.13

No real changes, just to synchronise versions with procmail

Most notably, procmail v3.12 broke $$=^0 conditions

The 3.12 HISTORY entry was incomplete

1999/12/17: v3.14 (never really released, was only available as prerelease)

If no Message-ID could be recovered from a bounced message, procbounce always picked the same hashkey (this time I mean it)

Strip List-* header fields from incoming messages and add List-Subscribe: and List-Unsubscribe: with mailto: URLs for the request address

Automatic cross-posting of messages sent to a digested list over to the undigested list only worked if the latter contained the letter 'y'

Recognize still more queue warning messages

Ignore "Data format", 8-bit conversion, and size errors -- the address is fine, the particular message is presumably at fault

Use four digit digest volume numbers starting in the year 2000

Setting archive_hist to "all" causes the archive to never be truncated

Changes to multigram:

• ignore words that start with an '@' unless they look like a route address

Reject attempts to subscribe someone twice with an X-Command mail

Recognize DSNs and enable some primitive parsing of them

Mention online FAQ in SmartList Manual

2000/09/03: v3.15

Let the location of the "latest" archive be set from rc.custom

Add List-Help: and List-Post: header fields with mailto: URLs for the request address and correct format of other List-* header fields

"Wrong address" archive retrieval warnings could end up in the header

Send submitted messages to maintainer if moderators file is needed but missing

Only add List-Subscribe: and List-Unsubscribe: header fields if auto_subscibe and auto_unsubscribe, respectively, are enabled

Clarify the error message when a list cannot be created

When forwarding a message from a digest list to its corresponding undigested list, remove any Delivered-To: header field containing the name of the digested list, thus allowing the message forwarded back to go out.

Changes to multigram:

• prevent attempts to exercise a Linux kernel security hole

2001/04/10: v3.16pre

DSN recognizer was broken by the CVS tabifier

The install.sh script didn't work with the POSIX shell or ksh due to change in behavior of redirection using `exec'.