Re: [Nmh-workers] Questionable code - the bigger picture

[Jon Steinhart]

> > There's really something bigger going on than just my query about this piece
> > of questionable code.  A side-effect of a project that I'm working on is 
> > that
> > I'm adding some features to nmh to support that project.  So I'm looking at 
> > a
> > lot of the code.  I'm adding comments to stuff when I figure out what it 
> > does
> > ,
> > and would like to clean up things that could use it while I'm at it.  In 
> > othe
> > r
> > words, I'm trying to incrementally revamp the code.  So I don't just want to
> > put off all changes for some future grand revamping, because I don't expect
> > that that will ever happen.
> 
> Actually, I think in order for nmh to stay alive, it has to happen.  I've
> been slowly working on cleaning things up in a private repository I'm
> keeping.  It's slow and horrid work, but it's needed.  Much of this code is
> very old and predates most of the current standards.
> 
> If there is interest, I think it would be worth starting a cleanup branch
> in CVS, or an nmh-cleanup sub project (possibly not hosted on savannah).
> 
> There are a number of features I would like to see nmh have, but I soon
> came to understand that it's just too hard with the current code.
> 
> -- 
>     JB

I'm not convinced of the need to start a separate branch for this.  I haven't
yet run across anything that requires this.  But, I can be convinced.

What sort of things do you think need to be done to nmh?  My list is pretty
small:
        1.  Clean up the code.  Make it use more modern (at least Posix)
            system features, get rid of code that was there to work with
            really broken systems.  Document the code.

        2.  Add a few small features such as the aforementioned 
-nochangecontext.

        3.  Improve the reading end of mime mail.  I've brought this issue up
            before and have ideas on how to do this.

So what else needs doing?  Let's put together a plan to do it.

Jon