Re: Source Compilation (more advice)

[John Williams <williams@morinda.com>]

On Mon, 20 Apr 1998, Jason Reed wrote:
> Neither fetch.2 nor the ftp site let me at any sort of Makefile, a whole
> slew of programs seem to be missing from $PBMHOME/bin, I've only been able
> to partially reconstruct the directory structure by guessing, and admin.pl
> appears a truly odd mix of perl and C++.

The real admin programs are in the old (pre-C++) src directory, accessible
with the "fetch" (not fetch.2) command.

> What's up, and how the heck have people managed to compile this on *any*
> system other than Richard's itself?

Myself and akur have experimental servers running to work on and test new
games.  They are at <xpbmserv@morinda.com> and <pbmserv@bsdi.com>.  Be
careful if you fetch sources from these site, as some (especially
game.cpp) have changes which are not in Richard's sources.

I'm happy to give advice.  Post here or email me directly (userid: sharkey
or <williams@morinda.com>).  Let us know what you are planning to work 
on so we can avoid duplicated effort.  Here is a list of games which akur
and I have working to some extext:

      DarkChess, KnightMate, RennChess, RifleChess, LosingChess,
             GreatChess, ProgressiveChess,
      ChuShogi, ProgressiveShogi, ProgressiveChuShogi,
      Gess, ChineseCheckers

If anyone wants to vote for which games they would like to see installed
on the main server first, feel free. 


Some more "getting started" advice follows...

Read the implementation.notes file which Richard posted.
My directory structure is currently:

   $PBMSERV/bin
   $PBMSERV/etc
   $PBMSERV/games
   $PBMSERV/games/Chess
   $PBMSERV/games/Shogi
   $PBMSERV/games/{other-games...}
   $PBMSERV/help
   $PBMSERV/history
   $PBMSERV/input
   $PBMSERV/lists
   $PBMSERV/log
   $PBMSERV/ratings
   $PBMSERV/src
   $PBMSERV/standings
   $PBMSERV/tmp

pbmserv.pl is the program which processes the mail messages and calls the
appropriate game program.  You will need to make at least a few changes to
this for you local setup.  At least make sure the PBMSERV variable is set
correctly.  
You will also need a sendmail script in the $PBMSERV/bin directory.  This
can be as simple as
      #!/bin/sh
      cat -
which will allow you to type the pbmserv commands at the command line (as
long as PBMSERV is set) and the results will be sent to the screen.
My sendmail.sh looks like this:

     #!/bin/sh
     cat - | tee $PBMHOME/log/lastsendmail | (
     if [ "x$SENDER" = "x" ] ; then
          echo "$0 $*"
          cat -
     else
          /usr/lib/sendmail -fxpbmserv@morinda.com -F"Experimental PBeM Server" $*
     fi
     )

This check whether SENDER is set.  If it is, this is the result of a real
mail message processed by pbmserv.pl and it mails the results.  If it is
not, it is the result of me typing the pbmserv command at the command line
and it prints the result on the screen.

One other necessary file is "$PBMSERV/etc/users".  When you are first
setting up the server you can simply type a couple users into this file.
    user1:pass1:email1
    user2:pass2:email2