TZ/rmail problems again

[Alexis Rosen]

urlichs at smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs) writes:  [quoting me about uuxqt]
>< >The cause of this is a *uuxqt* without TZ set properly.
>
>I would like to know why anybody would even _need_ TZ defined as anything.
>The C library takes care of the whole mess automatically by looking at the
>appropriate files in /etc/zoneinfo!
>
>Obviously the UUCP (and probably rmail also) code needs some serious bashing
>to throw out every scrap of code that deals with time, to be replaced with
>calls to the C library.  Somebody at Apple should do that. Now.

Well, in fact uuxqt and uucico et al. are _not_ broken. It seems that, in
fact, the C library is broken. Apple knew about this and declined to fix it
in 2.0.1, but I hear that it definitely will be fixed next time around.
(This is all from discussions with Apple people who looked into the problem.)

>I'm somewhat unhappy about the current situation, not because it causes
>problems for me but because it generates the strong impression that here is a
>very unnecessary and painful problem with a very obvious and simple solution,
>only the people in charge don't seem to be doing anything about it.
>(If that impression is totally wrong, so much the better; but the outside
>world seems to get a different picture.)

Your impression is correct. They made a decision without, I think, proper
regard for the (relatively small) investment of time it would take to deal
with the problem. They believed that few people were affected by this and
chose to put their energies elsewheres.

While I respect the need for prioritizing I feel that this was a serious
mistake. Clearly many of us are affected by it. (Whether there are enough of
us to warrnat fixing it can only be decided by Apple, of course.)

...But cheer up. As I said, they have finally seen the light. I expect this
to be fixed for good in the next version. For the few who continue to have
problems, of course, this is small consolation.

>NB: If I could distribute the binaries I compiled from BSD UUCP, the problem
>    would go away, but it seems that the legal matters involved prevent me
>    from doing that. Sorry.

HDB, you can't distribute. But BSD UUCP binaries should be fine. All A/UX
users have binary licenses from AT&T so what's the problem? Surely there's
no difficulty in releasing the stuff that's BSD...

---
Alexis Rosen
Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NY
{cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis