ante-meridian, EDT

huh? what?
I haven't had a lot to report in the last couple of months, so I didn't report it. But now I do, and I am.

spackle
A few weeks ago my group ran into an odd problem with our CVS repository: people's diff commit messages were getting entangled. The repository was correct, it was just the mail messages that were sometimes combined. The culprit? An invalid assumption of uniqueness for file naming: the logging script used getpgrp() to form a unique ID for the patch cluster. That works, usually, but not here. See, this repository (being private) was being updated through pserver, and the getpgrp() was always returning the info about inetd's pgrp. Fixed this by generating an MD5 hash of the one constant for a patch cluster, the log message, and using that for the unique ID instead. If you're using the log_accum.pl script from the Apache repository, or any of the others where I've installed it over the years (like Jikes), you're susceptible to this pserver-only bug.

Versionary
Some minor tweaks in here, still pre-alpha. Be more forthcoming about the cause of 'n files here, but none matched the current tag ()' messages -- by reporting missing apps right up front. Also started prototyping correct handling of read-only repositories..

obOpenMouth
I hadn't heard anything from the NordU2002 people about my travel arrangements, so I pinged them yesterday. This morning my mailbox contained a message: 'Oh, there must have been a misunderstanding; make your own travel arrangements and we'll reimburse you after the conference.' Bzzzzt! Not the conditions under which I agreed to go. I don't do 'reimbursement' of airfare or lodging any more; I've been stiffed too many times. Whomever's inviting me gets to pre-pay or direct-bill those. I'm sure not about to put myself in a position to have to eat the cost of a trans-Atlantic flight, even with fares cheaper than they used to be.. I Cced everyone involved on my response, so hopefully they'll get a clew and stick by their original commitment.