[File] file/libmagic bug tracker problem

[Christos Zoulas]

On Feb 6,  1:49am, stokito at gmail.com (Sergey Ponomarev) wrote:
-- Subject: [File] file/libmagic bug tracker problem

| Hi,
| 
| I wanted to file a bug but bugtracker http://bugs.gw.com/ is down and the
| same for mailing list http://mx.gw.com/mailman/listinfo/file but the
| https://mailman.astron.com/pipermail/file/ works. BTW is this the same
| email lists?
| Please check the website.

I don't own it (gw.com). I've moved the bugtracker to bugs.astron.com. I also
don't own the file website (that points you there), otherwise I would
have fixed it. The owner does not respond to emails. You can try too :-)
I've also fixed recent versions of the file command to document this.

| Also since I already wrote to you then I want you to know that developers
| like me have some pain:
| 
| 1. It's hard to find official source code of the file utility. The google
| search "libmagic" shown some unofficial
| https://github.com/threatstack/libmagic with some outdated version. And you
| may see that there is actually some developers even sent pull requests.

I don't own google either :-) Yes, I am open to ideas though.

| 2. On the official GitHub repo the same situation: there is more that 50
| pull requests that was rejected
| https://github.com/file/file/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed
| Personally speaking for me it would be much easier to send PR on GitHub and
| I have no idea what is a reason why development wasn't moved yet from CVS
| to github.

You are making assumptions here. Most of them were accepted and merged.
There were a few rejected for valid reasons. As for the CVS to git
conversion, it is not that important since the mirror just works... One
day I will find the time.

| 3. I tried to build but usual `./configure; make install` doesn't worked
| because the ./configure script was missed. Only after checking the
| .travis.yml file I found that I should execute `autoreconf -f -i` first.
| Can you please refer this in README or INSTALL documentation?

There is a README.DEVELOPER that contains this infomation and more.

| 4. Actually I was interested in libmagic but I just figured it out that
| file repository contents the libmagic and builds it. This is note clearly
| stated in README:
| 
| $ cat README | grep libmagic
| itself, libmagic can be used by 3rd party programs that wish to identify
| src/magic.c - the libmagic api
| 
| I runned make install and checked it's logs to be sure that libmagic was
| copied and only then I sigh with relief.
| 
| So could you write in the caption of README that this is both file and
| libmagic?

Yes, I could do that.

christos