Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!feeder.erje.net!2.us.feeder.erje.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!panix!qz!not-for-mail
From: Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com>
Newsgroups: news.software.readers
Subject: Re: Android newsreader
Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2017 20:46:04 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: Some absurd concept
Lines: 97
Message-ID: <eli$1711071544@qz.little-neck.ny.us>
References: <f50lu0Fhh5oU3@mid.individual.net> <eli$1710231553@qz.little-neck.ny.us> <f573oiF3kvnU1@mid.individual.net> <eli$1710232113@qz.little-neck.ny.us>
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NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2017 20:46:04 +0000 (UTC)
X-Liz: It's actually happened, the entire Internet is a massive game of Redcode
X-Motto: "Erosion of rights never seems to reverse itself." -- kenny@panix
X-US-Congress: Moronic Fucks.
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X-Comments: "'Pray that I don't alter the bargain further.'
	     Welcome Darth Google."
	     -- HonorableSoul
Bytes: 4644

In news.software.readers, Eli the Bearded  <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:
> Okay, don't. Pick a Unix newsreader you like and compile it on Android.
> It's a simple port compared to the old SunOS / AIX / NetBSD / Xenix /
> etc portability issues. And most newsreaders are old enough to have been
> ported to a large number of Unixes.

FWIW, I got trn to compile and run in the Termux shell today. It needed
a very small amount of code fiddling. 

Gotcha 1:
Added the termux include and lib paths to glibpth and locincpth in
config.sh (/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/lib and
/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/include).

Gotcha 2:
Can't use /bin/sh, the sh to use is in a different directory. This is
one of the more tedious things to fix, since it was ingrained in the
authors that /bin/sh would just work. I used
/data/data/com.termux/files/bin/sh instead. This needs to be fixed in
the Makefile after running Configure and might need fixing in the
various shell scripts created.

Gotcha 3:
Needed a b*-to-mem* patch, stick it in a a new file and modify Makefile,
or stick it in an existing .c file. Make sure -lc is used during link.

    /*
     * strings.h functions bcopy / bcmp / bzero are obsolete,
     * replaced with string.h memcpy / memcmp / memset
     * A fix file for older software.
     */

    #include <string.h>

    /* compares two strings and returns 0 if the same, non-zero otherwise.
     * memcmp is more explicit about what the non-zero value is than bcmp
     */
    int bcmp(const void *sa, const void *sb, size_t sl) {
      int result = memcmp(sa, sb, sl);

      if(result) {
	return(1);
      }
      return(0);
    }

    /* memcpy returns the old value of dst, bcopy returns nothing.
     * the two also switch src/dst order
     */
    void bcopy(const void *src, void *dst, size_t sl) {
      (void)memcpy(dst, src, sl);
      return;
    }

    /* bzero sets everything to zero. memset can set any value */
    void bzero(void *nuke, size_t sl) {
      (void)memset(nuke, 0, sl);
      return;
    }

Gotcha 4:
The bison provided in Termux doesn't like the parsedate.y source. I
built the parsedate.c file on another system with bison, and then it
compiled and linked just fine. YMMV.

Gotcha 5:
There are no password file functions, so a judicious return() from
the setusername() function in env.c was necessary (right before first
#ifdef). The code is designed to cope with that function failing to do
anything useful.

Gotcha 6:
Hard links don't work. In util.c, I changed a call to finalize(1) to
return() to prevent hard links failing causing trn to quit early.

Gotcha 7:
Pnews isn't working, so posting doesn't work. This is probably an easy
fix once I look at it. (Pnews is a shell script.)

Gotcha N:
I haven't tested Rnmail, but I fully expect that to not work. For one
thing, I don't have a sendmail tool to actually send mail.

Gotcha N+1:
I haven't tested authenticated NNTP. I know that trn supports this, but
I recall having to replace the included inews for that in the past. (The
inews tool is used by Pnews to actually post the posts.)

The Good:
But the compile I had zero issues reading posts off of the test NNTP
server I used.

   NNTPSERVER=news.mozilla.org ./trn

Elijah
------
so quit yer bellyaching