[Alpine-alpha] Announcing Alpine 0.8 (fwd)

most of you probably already saw this, but for those who didn't...

-Ryan

p.s. congrats, pine/alpine team! i can't wait to try out the new world order.

--
http://snarfed.org/

---------- Forwarded message ---------- 
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:30:58 -0800 (PST) 
From: Jeff Franklin <jpf <at> cac.washington.edu> 
Reply-To: alpine-alpha <at> u.washington.edu 
To: Alpine Pre-Release Team <alpine-alpha <at> u.washington.edu> 
Subject: [Alpine-alpha] Announcing Alpine 0.8

At long last!  We're pleased to announce the first pre-release of the Alpine 
Messaging System.  Today's pre-release includes all source necessary to build 
Unix, Windows and Web-based mail user agents and accompanying utilites.

On the surface, Alpine and friends will appear strikingly similar to their 
cousins from the Pine Mail System, but underneath little remains the same. 
First, you'll find the source completely restructured.  New source directories 
have appeared and source files are smaller and divided by function.

Next, you'll find a completely updated build process based on GNU autotools. 
No port abbreviations.  No custom build script.  Just run "./configure" and 
"make" and you're off.

Unfortunately, two exceptions remain.  The c-client library build is based on 
static makefiles and specific os-based targets.  The good news is the configure 
script should generate appropriate targets and build the library with minimum 
intervention.  The Windows build, which also uses static make files, does not 
use configure and currently requires more to be done by hand than we would 
like.

We'd also like to stress that the source released today has NOT been thoroughly 
tested.  Not feature-wise.  Not system diversity-wise.  Not much at all. 
Beyond daily use of current builds, we have not attempted any amount of formal 
testing nor have we tried building on any platforms beyond those we use for 
development - Red Hat Enterprise and Fedore Core Linux, Apple OS X, and Windows 
XP.

What's more, we're not finished.  While you familiarize yourself with the new 
source, build process and features, we will continue to put the finishing 
touches on the final release as well as address the comments and questions that 
you raise.

And speaking of comments and questions, the only thing less complete than the 
testing is the documentation.  The built-in help should be reasonably accurate, 
but pretty much everything within the doc/ directory has yet to receive any 
attention.  This includes the technical notes.

That said, the first pre-release version of Alpine can be found at:

              ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/alpine/alpine-0.8.tar.gz
              (MD5: 5a5d46189b3cc82b84b146b87c9bef2a)

For those wishing to run Alpine for Windows, we've already built a zip-file 
package, which can be found at:

              ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/alpine/alpine-0.8-wnt.zip
              (MD5: 31d644ada7ac7182ca048181cb3fd57d)

Lastly, our team's goal is to produce as fully featured and stable a mail 
system as possible.  We also realize that we cannot possibly achieve that goal 
alone, so it is in this team spirit that we offer these pre-release sources. 
Please share your comments and questions with us.

Thanks and enjoy!

The Alpine Messaging System Team

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