Automake commit complete, SPAM filtering for PR's

[Chad Walstrom]

Automake Conversion
===================
As some of you may have noticed, I completed the automake commit this
weekend.  Everything appears to be in order.  I did take a shortcut
with the ChangeLog entries, only adding entries to the root directory
ChangeLog.  I find the ChangeLog-per-directory policy a little
annoying and would like to see us move to a single ChangeLog.  If no
one objects, I plan on moving the sub-directory ChangeLogs to the doc/
directory for historical reference.

If you have patches that have not yet been applied to the CVS HEAD
that alter a subdirectory ChangeLog, don't worry about regenerating
the patch.  I'll manually apply it to the root ChangeLog.

Please test out CVS HEAD and submit bugs/patches.  There are a few
remaining TODO items regarding this transition:

  * FIX kERBEROS BUILDS.
  
    Right now, the m4 macros for configuring kerberos have been
    disabled.  I just didn't have time to debug and convert them to
    autoconf 2.59.

  * UPDATE PATH SUBSTITUTION IN DOCUMENTATION.

    All of the variable path substitution in the manpages has been
    changed to @VARIABLE@ instead of xVARIABLEx.  Additionally, paths
    such as @PREFIX@/etc/gnats or @PREFIX@/usr/share/gnats should be
    changed to @sysconfdir@ and @datadir@ respectively.  I want to
    start using autoconf variables faithfully throughout the source
    code and documentation.

  * TEST RUNTIME!

    We still need to test the viability of the applications generated
    by this build.

Decoupling address@hidden from PR Submission
===============================================
Last month, it was suggested that I decouple the PR email submission
for the GNATS project from the address@hidden email list, so I
published the new email submission address on the project website,
address@hidden  The SPAM-crawlers quickly found it, and
we subsequently were inundated with Korean SPAM.

I've fixed the ~/.procmailrc recipes for filtering spam and am
actively updating Spamassassin's Bayesian database.  You should see
the SPAM PR's drop in frequency.

You can start using address@hidden to maintain
conversations about specific PR's.  If you wish to email patches
rather than use the sourceforge patch submission utility, send them to
address@hidden or use the Gnatsweb interface during your initial
submission.  If you would like to have an account and edit permissions
for the GNATS database, send me an email with your preferred username
and crypted or md5sum'ed password (no plain-text, please).

This Week
=========
This week, I plan on addressing the outstanding patches submitted by
you over the last few months: security enhancements, bugfixes, etc.

-- 
Chad Walstrom <address@hidden>           http://www.wookimus.net/
           assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */