The libpostal project / News: Recent posts

Hey hey, it's -SNAP6!

You know, 6 is the first perfect number.

As promised at the time of the -SNAP5 release, this contains an error-handling system similar to the standard C 'errno' facility, which is thread-safe. libpostal itself doesn't do any threading, and probably never will; however, I strive to make it usable in threaded programs. Details are in the docs on how to do it.

Also, now that we have an error-handling system, I've gone through and added a lot of error-checking as well. The docs describe the various possible error-codes for each function, so you should be able to write decently robust code against libpostal finally.... read more

Well, finally, here we are at -SNAP5.

It's been about a year and a half since our last SNAPshot, and in that time we've gotten almost a month's-worth of part-time work done. Pretty pitiful, I suppose, but that's what Real Life will do to ya.

This SNAP introduces a number of new things since -SNAP4, including:
o Much improved mbox support; a lot faster and less fragile.
o More functions for manipulating message content
o Lots of memory leaks plugged, and infrastructure for using dmalloc to find new ones put in place
o Build infrastructure is significantly improved for better portability
o And, we now have a pretty good spread of Maildir functionality completed!... read more

The formatted docs have arrived!

The new libpostal_docs package, with formatted docs in DVI, PS, PDF, HTML, TXT, and RTF format, is now available. libpostal_docs-SNAP4 contains documentation of the state of the library correspondant to the -SNAP4 source release.

The docs are also available individually on our project webpage, at http://libpostal.sourceforge.net/.

Merry Christmas!

So, we've been slow on releases. Been like 6 months, in fact. Ouch&all.

So, for my present this year, I'm giving you the long-overdue next SNAPshot of libpostal. This SNAPshot fixes all known bugs with the previous versions (including some rather serious build problems), and expands the functionality in the mbox arena. The documentation is pretty much up-to-date with the code. Many of the new features are shown in the 'listfrom' test program. We've also gotten a lot of architectural cleaning up done, though there's plenty left to do. Looking forward, we're going to finish cleaning up some of the gunk (POSTAL_MSG_LIST, for instance), flesh out the pieces of the mbox support (like more locking schemes, better handling of changing and changed files, etc), and write a Maildir/ backend, for the next SNAPshot. Hopefully shouldn't take more than a month or two, but Spare Time is a precious and scarce commodity these days. ... read more

libpostal-SNAP3 has just been cut, hot off the presses, for your perusal. While everyone has
constant access to the latest-and-greatest by CVS, I personally think it's still a good idea to release a packaged snapshot from time to time.

This SNAPshot is primarily a bugfix release over -SNAP2, and fixes bugs in the mbox code and the POP LIST function. It also includes extra features in the Make structure that allow it to build more easily on a wider array of platforms. See the KNOWN_BUGS and TODO files in the distribution for more information.... read more

libpostal-SNAP2 is now available for download. While everyone has constant access to the latest-and-greatest by CVS, I personally thing it's still a good idea to release a packaged snapshot from time to time.

We've made a lot of progress since the first SNAPshot, which only had enough in it to show where we wanted to go.

-SNAP2 has a full implementation of the basic POP3 protocol, as well as mbox writing ability! This means it has enough code to be used to write a fetchmail-like application, which grabs mail from a POP server, and sticks it in a mbox-format mailbox on your local machine for you to read. In fact, such a program is included in the samples/ directory!... read more

Now that a few niggling details are worked around (not sorted out yet, but welcome to life), the libpostal project is now starting the slow move forward into developing a respectable product. We're now into development on it, with CVS chugging along, and a early-view snapshot is available. Have fun, kids!