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NAME

       aedist - remotely distribute a change

SYNOPSIS

       aedist -Send [ option...  ]
       aedist -Receive [ option...  ]
       aedist -REPlay [ option...  ] -f URL
       aedist -MIssing [ option...  ] -f URL
       aedist -PENding [ option...  ] -f URL
       aedist -Inventory [ option...  ]
       aedist -ARChive [ option...  ]
       aedist -List [ option...  ]
       aedist -Help
       aedist -VERSion

DESCRIPTION

       The aedist command is used to send and receive change sets to
       facilitate geographically distributed development.  The expected
       transport mechanism is e-mail, however other mechanisms are equally
       possible.

       The basic function is to reproduce a change, so a command like
              aedist -send | aedist -receive
       may be used to clone a change, though less efficiently than aeclone(1).
       The file format used is designed to withstand mail servers, so
       activities such as
              aedist -send | e-mail | aedist -receive
       (where e-mail represents sending, transporting and receiving your e-
       mail) will reproduce the change on a remote system.  With suitable
       tools (such as PGP) is it possible to
              aedist -send | encrypt | e-mail | decrypt | aedist -receive
       The mechanism is also designed to allow web-based distribution such as
              aedist -send | web-server  web-browser | aedist -receive
       by the use of appropriate CGI scripts and mailcap entries.

       It is possible to support both a “push” model and a “pull” model using
       this command.  For suggestions and ideas for various ways to do this,
       see the Aegis Users Guide.

SEND

       The send variant takes a specified change, or baseline, and constructs
       a distribution package containing all of the change attributes and
       source file attributes and source file contents.  The result is
       compressed, and encoded into a text format which can be sent as e-mail
       without being corrupted by the mail transfer agents along the way.

   Options
       The following options are understood by the send variant:

       -BaseLine
               This option may be used to specify the source of a project,
               rather than a change.  Implies the -Entire_Source option,
               unless over-ridden.

       -Change number
               This option may be used to specify a particular change within a
               project.  See aegis(1) for a complete description of this
               option.

       -COMPATibility version-number
               This option may be used to specify the version of aedist(1)
               which will be receiving this change set.  This information is
               used to select which features to include in the data, and which
               to omit.  By default, the latest feature set will be used.

       -compression-algorithm name
               This option may be used to specify the compression to be used.
               They are listed on order of compression effeciency.

               none    Use no compression (not always meaningful for all
                       commands).

               gzip    Use the compression used by the gzip(1) program.

               bzip2   Use the compression used by the bzip2(1) program.

               More compression algorithms may be added in the future.

       -COMPress
               This option is deprecated in favour of the -comp-alg=gzip or
               -comp-alg=bzip2 options.

       -No_COMPress
               This options is deprecated in favour of the -comp-alg=none
               option.

       -Content_Transfer_Encoding name
               This option may be used to specify the content transfer
               encoding to be used.  It may take one of the following values:

               None    No content transfer encoding is to be performed.

               Base64  The MIME base 64 encoding is to be used.  This is the
                       default.

               Quoted_Printable
                       The MIME quoted printable encoding is to be used.

               Unix_to_Unix_encode
                       The ancient unix-to-unix encoding is to be used.

               These encodings may be abbreviated in the same way as comment
               line options.

       -Ascii_Armor
               This means the same as the “-cte=base64” option above.

       -No_Ascii_Armor
               This means the same as the “-cte=none” option above.

       -DELta number
               This option may be used to specify a particular delta in the
               project’s history to copy the file from, rather than the most
               current version.  If the delta has been given a name (see
               aedn(1) for how) you may use a delta name instead of a delta
               number.  It is an error if the delta specified does not exist.
               Delta numbers start from 1 and increase; delta 0 is a special
               case meaning “when the branch started”.

       -DELta_Date string
               This option may be used to specify a particular date and time
               in the project’s history to copy the file from, rather than the
               most current version.  It is an error if the string specified
               cannot be interpreted as a valid date and time.  Quote the
               string if you need to use spaces.

       -DELta_From_Change number
               This option may be used to specify a particular project delta
               from its change number.

       -Description_Header
               This option may be used to add an RFC 822 style header to the
               change description being sent, with a From and Date line.  This
               is the default.

       -No_Description_Header
               This option suppresses the description header.

       -Entire_Source
               This option may be used to send the entire source of the
               project, as well as the change source files.

       -Ignore_UUID
               This option may be used to ignore the UUID, if present, of the
               outgoing change set.

       -No_Ignore_UUID
               This option forces the aedist command to use the outgoing
               change set’s UUID information.  This is the default (unless the
               compatibility option will to avoid attributes).

       -Mime_Headers
               This option may be use to force the presence of mime headers in
               the output, in circumstances they would usually be absent.

       -No_Mime_Headers
               This option may be use to force the absence of mime headers in
               the output, in circumstances where they would usually be
               present.

       -Partial_Source
               This option may be used to send only source files of a change.
               This is the default, except for the -BaseLine option.

       -Output filename
               This option may be used to specify the output file.  The output
               is sent to the standard output by default.

       -PATch  This option is deprecated.  Please use the -COMPATibility
               option instead.

       -No_PATch
               This option is deprecated.  Please use the -COMPATibility=4.6
               option instead.

       -Project name
               This option may be used to select the project of interest.
               When no -Project option is specified, the AEGIS_PROJECT
               environment variable is consulted.  If that does not exist, the
               user’s $HOME/.aegisrc file is examined for a default project
               field (see aeuconf(5) for more information).  If that does not
               exist, when the user is only working on changes within a single
               project, the project name defaults to that project.  Otherwise,
               it is an error.

       -Signed_Off_By
               This option may be used to have a Signed-off-by: line appended
               to the change set description.

       -No_Signed_Off_By
               This option may be used to prevent a Signed-off-by: line from
               being appended to the change set description.

RECEIVE

       The receive variant takes a change package created by the send variant
       and creates an Aegis change (see aenc(1)) to implement the change
       within.  Files are added to the change (see aerm(1), aecp(1), aenf(1)
       and aent(1)) and then the file contents are unpackaged into the
       development directory.

       The change is then built (see aeb(1)), differenced (see aed(1)), and
       tested (see aet(1)).  If all of this is successful, development of the
       change is ended (see aed(1)).  The automatic process stops at this
       point, so that a local reviewer can confirm that the change is desired.

   Notification
       The aedist command invokes various other Aegis commands.  The usual
       notifications that these commands would issue are issued.

   Options
       The following options are understood by the receive variant:

       -Change number
               This option may be used to choose the change number to be used,
               otherwise one will be chosen automatically.

       -DELta number
               This option may be used to specify a particular delta in the
               project’s history to copy the file from, just as for the
               aecp(1) command.  You may also use a delta name instead of a
               delta number.

       -DIRectory path
               This option may be used to specify which directory is to be
               used.  It is an error if the current user does not have
               appropriate permissions to create the directory path given.
               This must be an absolute path.

               Caution: If you are using an automounter do not use ‘pwd‘ to
               make an absolute path, it usually gives the wrong answer.

       -File filename
               Read the change set from the specified file.  The default is to
               read it from the standard input.  The filename ‘-’ is
               understood to mean the standard input.

               If your system has libcurl(3), and Aegis was configured to use
               it at compile time (this is the default if it is available) you
               will also be able to specify a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
               in place of the file name.  The relevant data will be
               downloaded.  (The -Verbose option will provide a progress bar.)

       -PATch  This option may be used to apply patches from the input, if
               available.  This generally results in fewer merge problems, but
               it requires the two repositories to be well synchronized.  This
               is the default.

       -No_PATch
               This option may be used to ignore patches in the input, if any
               are present.

       -Ignore_UUID
               This option may be used to ignore the UUID, if present, of the
               incoming change set.

       -No_Ignore_UUID
               This option force the aedist command to use the change set’s
               UUID.  This is the default.

       -Project name
               This option may be used to set the project name.  If not
               specified, the project name in the input package will be used,
               rather than the usual project name defaulting mechanism.

       -Trojan This option may be used to treat the change set as if it had a
               Trojan horse attack in it.

       -No_Trojan
               This option may be used to treat the change set as if it
               definitely does not have a Trojan horse attack in it.  Use with
               extreme care.  You need to have authenticated the message with
               something like PGP first and know the the author well.

   Security
       Receiving changes by e-mail, and automatically committing them to the
       baseline without checking them, would be a recipe for disaster.  A
       number of safeguards are provided:

       · The format of the package is confirmed to be correct, and the package
         verified for internal consistency, before it is unpacked and acted
         upon.

       · The automatic portion of the process stops when development ends.
         This ensures that a local reviewer validates the change before it is
         committed, preventing accidental or malicious damage.

       · If the change seeks to update the project config file, the automatic
         process terminates before the build or difference occurs.  This is
         because this file could contain trojans for these operations, so a
         human must examine the file before the change proceeds any further.

       · There is a potential_trojan_horse = [ string ]; field in the
         projectconfig file.  Nominate build configuration files, shell
         scripts, code generators, etc here to specify files in addition to
         the project configuration file which should cause the automatic
         processing to halt.

       · The use of e-mail authentication and encryption systems, such as PGP
         and GPG, are encouraged.  However, it is expected that this
         processing will occur after aedist --send has constructed the package
         and before aedist --receive examines and acts on the package.
         Verification of the sender is the surest defense against trojan
         horses.

       · Automatic sending and receiving of packages is supported, but not
         implemented within the aedist command.  It is expected that the
         aedist command will be used within shell scripts customized for your
         site and its unique security requirements.  See the Aegis User Guide
         for several different ways to do this.

       · The more you use Aegis’ test management facilities (see aent(1) and
         aet(1)) the harder it is for an inadequate change to get into the
         baseline.

   Duplicate Storms
       In a distributed development environment, it is common for change sets
       to eventually be propagated back to the originator.  There are
       situations (particularly in some star topologies) where several copies
       of the package will return to the originator.

       If these change sets are not detected at the review stage, and are
       propagated out yet again, there is the possibility of an exponential
       explosion of redundant packages being distributed again and again.

       To combat this, changes are checked after the files are unpacked, but
       before and build or difference or test is performed.  The “aecpu
       --unchanged” command is used to exclude all files that the local
       repository already has in the desired form.  If no change files remain
       after this, the change is dropped entirely (see aedbu(1) and aencu(1)).

REPLAY

       If you are tracking a remote site which makes a project available via
       the aeget(1) web interface, you can automatically synchronize with the
       remote site using the aedist -replay command.

       For example, Aegis developers can track the master project with a
       command of the form:
              aedist -p aegis.4.24.3 --replay -f aegis.sourceforge.net
       This command is internally rewritten as
              aedist --replay -p aegis.4.24.3 -f \
                http://aegis.sf.net/cgi-bin/aeget/aegis.4.24.3/?inventory
       If your cgi-bin directory is somewhere else, you will need to use the
       long form.

       The change set inventory page is human readable if you want to see what
       it contains.  The links on this page provide all the information
       necessary to download any of the change sets listed.

       This command reads the list of change set UUIDs from the remote
       repository, and compares it with the list of change set UUIDs in the
       local repository, and fetches any that are not present locally.

       Each of the change sets required are downloaded and unpacked by issuing
       a command such as
              aedist -rec -f \
                http://aegis.sf.net/cgi-bin/aeget/aegis.4.19.C010/?aedist
       If this completes successfully (and it is possible it won’t, either
       because of trojan warnings, or some conflict between local changes and
       the incoming remote changes), and your project has its develop_end_
       action set to goto_awaiting_integration, the change will be integrated
       using a command such as:
              aeintegratq -p aegis.4.24.3 -c 10
       and then starts over again for the next missing change set.

       This command will attempt to use the same change number as in the
       remote repository, if it is available.

   Options
       The following options are understood by this variant:

       -EXclude_UUID UUID
               This option may be used to exclude some change sets from being
               downloaded and unpacked.  This option may be used more than
               once.

       -No_EXclude_UUID UUID
               This option may be used to explicitly list change sets to be
               downloaded and unpacked, to the exclusion of all others.  This
               option may be used more than once.

       -EXclude_VERsion pattern
               This option may be used to explicitly exclude some change set
               from being downloaded and unpacked.  The pattern is matched
               against the version as displayed in the inventory.  This option
               may be used more than once.

       -INclude_VERsion pattern
               This option may be used to explicitly list change sets to be
               downloaded and unpacked, to the exclusion of all others.  The
               pattern is matched against the version as displayed in the
               inventory.  This option may be used more than once.

       -File filename
               Read the change set from the specified file.  The default is to
               read it from the standard input.  The filename ‘-’ is
               understood to mean the standard input.

               If your system has libcurl(3), and Aegis was configured to use
               it at compile time (this is the default if it is available) you
               will also be able to specify a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
               in place of the file name.  The relevant data will be
               downloaded.  (The -Verbose option will provide a progress bar.)

       -MAXimum
               This option may be used to download as many changes as possible
               by excluding the maximum number of local changes sets, by
               excluding both local change sets UUIDs (the default) but also
               excluding UUIDs mentioned in change "original-uuid" attributes.

       -PErsevere
               This option may be used to specify that all relevant change
               sets should be downloaded, even if some fail.  Defaults to the
               user’s persevere_preference if not specified, see aeuconf(5)
               for more information.

       -No_PErsevere
               This option may be used to specify that the downloading of
               change sets should stop after the first failure.  Defaults to
               the user’s persevere_preference if not specified, see
               aeuconf(5) for more information.

       -Project name
               This option may be used to select the project of interest.
               When no -Project option is specified, the AEGIS_PROJECT
               environment variable is consulted.  If that does not exist, the
               user’s $HOME/.aegisrc file is examined for a default project
               field (see aeuconf(5) for more information).  If that does not
               exist, when the user is only working on changes within a single
               project, the project name defaults to that project.  Otherwise,
               it is an error.

       -Trojan This option is passed to any aedist(1) commands spawned by this
               command.

       -No_Trojan
               This option is passed to any aedist(1) commands spawned by this
               command.

       -Not_Compatibility
               This option must be used when using aedist --replay against a
               file based inventory.

MISSING

       If you want to see the change sets that aedist -replay may download
       before it goes ahead and does it, you can use a command such as:
              aedist --missing -f aegis.sf.net
       In particular, this allows you to select appropriate UUIDs for the
       aedist -replay -exclude or -no-exclude options.

   Options
       The following options are understood by this variant:

       -EXclude_UUID UUID
               This option may be used to exclude some change sets from being
               listed.  This option may be used more than once.

       -No_EXclude_UUID UUID
               This option may be used to explicitly list change sets to be
               listed, to the exclusion of all others.  This option may be
               used more than once.

       -EXclude_VERsion pattern
               This option may be used to explicitly exclude some change set
               from being listed.  The pattern is matched against the version
               as displayed in the inventory.  This option may be used more
               than once.

       -INclude_Version pattern
               This option may be used to explicitly list change sets to be
               listed, to the exclusion of all others.  The pattern is matched
               against the version as displayed in the inventory.  This option
               may be used more than once.

       -MAXimum
               This option may be used to download as many changes as possible
               by excluding the maximum number of local changes sets, by
               excluding both local change sets UUIDs (the default) but also
               excluding UUIDs mentioned in change "original-uuid" attributes.

PENDING

       If you want to see the change sets that a remote repository is missing
       with respect to yours, you can use a command such as:
              aedist --pending -f aegis.sf.net

   Options
       The following options are understood by this variant: -EXclude_UUID
       UUID This option may be used to exclude some local change sets from
       being listed.  This option may be used more than once.

       -No_EXclude_UUID UUID
               This option may be used to explicitly list local change sets to
               be listed, to the exclusion of all others.  This option may be
               used more than once.

       -EXclude_VERsion pattern
               This option may be used to explicitly exclude some local change
               set from being listed.  The pattern is matched against the
               version as displayed in the inventory.  This option may be used
               more than once.

       -INclude_VERsion pattern
               This option may be used to explicitly list local change sets to
               be listed, to the exclusion of all others.  The pattern is
               matched against the version as displayed in the inventory.
               This option may be used more than once.

INVENTORY

       The inventory variant can be used as an alternative to aeget to
       generate the inventory used by the replay, missing and pending
       variants.  The idea is to run the inventory variant on the development
       machine and then upload its output to the public repository.  In order
       to generate the inventory you can use a command such as:
              aedist --inventory -proj project > inventory.html

   Options
       The following options are understood by this variant:

       -AEGET  This option is used by aeget to require the original aeget(1)
               behavior.

       -All    This option is used to require the inclusion of the UUIDs
               contained in the original-UUID attribute of each change.

       -EXclude_Version pattern
               This option may be used to explicitly exclude some change set
               to be added to the inventory file.  The pattern is matched
               against the version as displayed in the inventory.  This option
               may be used more than once.

       -INclude_Version pattern
               This option may be used to explicitly list change sets to be
               added to the the inventory file, to the exclusion of all
               others.  The pattern is matched against the version as
               displayed in the inventory.  This option may be used more than
               once.

       -path_prefix_add
               This option is used to add a path prefix to the URLs generated
               in the inventory.

       -Project name
               This option may be used to select the project of interest.
               When no -Project option is specified, the AEGIS_PROJECT
               environment variable is consulted.  If that does not exist, the
               user’s $HOME/.aegisrc file is examined for a default project
               field (see aeuconf(5) for more information).  If that does not
               exist, when the user is only working on changes within a single
               project, the project name defaults to that project.  Otherwise,
               it is an error.

ARCHIVE

       As an alternative to using the aeget(1) CGI program, the aedist archive
       variant is provided.  This variant can be used to populate a directory
       with the aedist archives of each change with an UUID.  The archives
       will have a name based on the UUID of the change with extension ".ae",
       the fingerprint of the archive will be stored in a file with the same
       (base)name with extension ".fp".  Running the archive variant multiple
       times against the same target directory will update that directory,
       adding the files of changes integrated after the last run and
       regenerating the files if a corruption is detected.

   Options
       The following options are understood by the archive variant:

       -Change-Directory directory
               This option is used to designate the directory to be populated
               with the aedist(1) generated files.  If this option is not used
               then the current directory is used as the target of the
               command.  The directory must exists and be accessible by the
               user running the command.

       -EXclude_Version pattern
               This option may be used to explicitly exclude some change set
               to be added to the target directory.  The pattern is matched
               against the version as displayed in the inventory.  This option
               may be used more than once.

       -INclude_Version pattern
               This option may be used to explicitly list change sets to be
               added to the target directory, to the exclusion of all others.
               The pattern is matched against the version as displayed in the
               inventory.  This option may be used more than once.

       -Project name
               This option may be used to select the project of interest.
               When no -Project option is specified, the AEGIS_PROJECT
               environment variable is consulted.  If that does not exist, the
               user’s $HOME/.aegisrc file is examined for a default project
               field (see aeuconf(5) for more information).  If that does not
               exist, when the user is only working on changes within a single
               project, the project name defaults to that project.  Otherwise,
               it is an error.

LIST

       The list variant can be used to list the contents of a package without
       actually unpacking it first.  The output is reminiscent of the aegis
       -list change-details output.

   Options
       The following options are understood by the list variant:

       -File filename
               Read the change set from the specified file.  The default is to
               read it from the standard input.  The filename ‘-’ is
               understood to mean the standard input.

               If your system has libcurl(3), and Aegis was configured to use
               it at compile time (this is the default if it is available) you
               will also be able to specify a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
               in place of the file name.  The relevant data will be
               downloaded.  (The -Verbose option will provide a progress bar.)

       -Output filename
               This option may be used to specify the output file.  The output
               is sent to the standard output by default.  Only useful with
               the -List option.

OPTIONS

       The following options to this command haven’t been mentioned yet:

       -Help
               This option may be used to obtain more information about how to
               use the aedist program.

       See also aegis(1) for options common to all aegis commands.

       All options may be abbreviated; the abbreviation is documented as the
       upper case letters, all lower case letters and underscores (_) are
       optional.  You must use consecutive sequences of optional letters.

       All options are case insensitive, you may type them in upper case or
       lower case or a combination of both, case is not important.

       For example: the arguments "-project, "-PROJ" and "-p" are all
       interpreted to mean the -Project option.  The argument "-prj" will not
       be understood, because consecutive optional characters were not
       supplied.

       Options and other command line arguments may be mixed arbitrarily on
       the command line, after the function selectors.

       The GNU long option names are understood.  Since all option names for
       aedist are long, this means ignoring the extra leading ’-’.  The
       "--option=value" convention is also understood.

FILE FORMAT

       The file format re-uses existing formats, rather than introduce
       anything new.  This means it is possible to extract the contents of a
       package even when aedist is unavailable.

       · The source files and other information is stored as a cpio(1)
         archive.

       · The archive is compressed using the bzip2(1) format.  Typically
         primary source files are ASCII text, resulting in significant
         compression.

       · The compressed result is encoded using the MIME base64 encoding.
         This makes the result approximately 33% larger than the compressed
         binary would be, but still smaller than the primary sources.

       The cpio archive is used to store

       etc/project-name
               This contains the project name to apply the package to, unless
               over-ridden by the --project command line option.

       etc/change-number
               This contains the change number of the original change, this
               may be preserved if available on the target repository unless
               over-ridden by the --change command line option.

       etc/change-set
               This contains the change attributes and the list of source
               files and usages, in aecstate(5) format.

       patch/filename
               Each modified or renamed file in the package (named in
               etc/change-set) appears under the patch directory.  The file
               may be empty unless some edits was done on the source
               repository.

       src/filename
               Each source file in the package (named in etc/change-set)
               appears under the src/ directory.

       Extra files, or files out of order, are a fatal error.

EXIT STATUS

       The aedist command will exit with a status of 1 on any error.  The
       aedist command will only exit with a status of 0 if there are no
       errors.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       See aegis(1) for a list of environment variables which may affect this
       command.  See aepconf(5) for the project configuration file’s project_
       specific field for how to set environment variables for all commands
       executed by Aegis.

COPYRIGHT

       aedist version 4.24.3.D001
       Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
       2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Peter
       Miller

       The aedist program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use
       the ’aedist -VERSion License’ command.  This is free software and you
       are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; for details
       use the ’aedist -VERSion License’ command.

AUTHOR

       Peter Miller   E-Mail:   millerp@canb.auug.org.au
       /\/\*             WWW:   http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~millerp/

CREDITS

       This program evolved through discussion with a number of people.  If I
       have forgotten anyone, it wasn’t intentional.

       Ralf Fassel       <ralf@akutech.de>              Catching trojan horses.
       Walter Franzini   <walter.franzini@sys-net.it>   coding -replay download
       Florian Xhumari   <Florian.Xhumari@inria.fr>     On the need for pull interfaces.
       Graham Wheeler    <gram@cdsec.com>               HTTP pull interfacing.