aedist -Send [option...]
aedist -Receive [option...]
aedist -REPlay [option...] -f URL
aedist -MIssing [option...] -f URL
aedist -PENding [option...] -f URL
aedist -List [option...]
aedist -Help
aedist -VERSion
The aedist command is used to send and receive change sets to facilitate geographically distributed development. The expected transport mechanism is e-mail, however other mechanisms are equally possible.
The basic function is to reproduce a change, so a command like
aedist -send | aedist -receive
may be used to clone a change, though less efficiently than aeclone(1). The file format used is designed to withstand mail servers, so activities such as
aedist -send | e-mail | aedist -receive
(where e-mail represents sending, transporting and receiving your e-mail) will reproduce the change on a remote system. With suitable tools (such as PGP) is it possible to
aedist -send | encrypt | e-mail | decrypt | aedist -receive
The mechanism is also designed to allow web-based distribution such as
aedist -send | web-server → web-browser | aedist -receive
by the use of appropriate CGI scripts and mailcap entries.
It is possible to support both a “push” model and a “pull” model using this command. For suggestions and ideas for various ways to do this, see the Aegis Users Guide.
The send variant takes a specified change, or baseline, and constructs a distribution package containing all of the change attributes and source file attributes and source file contents. The result is compressed, and encoded into a text format which can be sent as e-mail without being corrupted by the mail transfer agents along the way.
The following options are understood by the send variant:
-BaseLineThis option may be used to specify the source of a project,
rather than a change.
Implies the -Entire_Source option, unless over-ridden.
-Change numberThis option may be used to specify a particular change within a project. See aegis(1) for a complete description of this option.
-COMPATibility version-numberThis option may be used to specify the version of aegis(1) which will be receiving this change set. This information is used to select which features to include in the data, and which to omit. By default, the latest feature set will be used.
-compression-algorithm nameThis option may be used to specify the compression to be used. They are listed on order of compression effeciency.
Use no compression (not always meaningful for all commands).
Use the compression used by the gzip(1) program.
Use the compression used by the bzip2(1) program.
More compression algorithms may be added in the future.
-COMPressThis option is deprecated in favour of the -comp-alg=gzip or
-comp-alg=bzip2 options.
-No_COMPressThis options is deprecated in favour of the -comp-alg=none option.
-Content_Transfer_Encoding nameThis option may be used to specify the content transfer encoding to be used. It may take one of the following values:
No content transfer encoding is to be performed.
The MIME base 64 encoding is to be used. This is the default.
The MIME quoted printable encoding is to be used.
The ancient unix-to-unix encoding is to be used.
These encodings may be abbreviated in the same way as comment line options.
-Ascii_ArmorThis means the same as the “-cte=base64” option above.
-No_Ascii_ArmorThis means the same as the “-cte=none” option above.
-DELta numberThis option may be used to specify a particular delta in the project's history to copy the file from, rather than the most current version. If the delta has been given a name (see aedn(1) for how) you may use a delta name instead of a delta number. It is an error if the delta specified does not exist. Delta numbers start from 1 and increase; delta 0 is a special case meaning “when the branch started”.
-DELta_Date stringThis option may be used to specify a particular date and time in the project's history to copy the file from, rather than the most current version. It is an error if the string specified cannot be interpreted as a valid date and time. Quote the string if you need to use spaces.
-Description_HeaderThis option may be used to add an RFC 822 style header to the change description being sent, with a From and Date line. This is the default.
-No_Description_HeaderThis option suppresses the description header.
-Entire_SourceThis option may be used to send the entire source of the project, as well as the change source files.
-Mime_HeadersThis option may be use to force the presence of mime headers in the output, in circumstances they would usually be absent.
-No_Mime_HeadersThis option may be use to force the absence of mime headers in the output, in circumstances where they would usually be present.
-Partial_SourceThis option may be used to send only source files of a change.
This is the default, except for the -BaseLine option.
-Output filenameThis option may be used to specify the output file. The output is sent to the standard output by default.
-PATchThis option is deprecated.
Please use the -COMPATibility option instead.
-No_PATchThis option is deprecated.
Please use the -COMPATibility=4.6 option instead.
-Project nameThis option may be used to select the project of interest.
When no
-Project
option is specified,
the
AEGIS_PROJECT
environment variable is consulted.
If that does not exist,
the user's
$HOME/.aegisrc
file is examined for a default project field (see
aeuconf(5)
for more information).
If that does not exist,
when the user is only working on changes within a single project,
the project name defaults to that project.
Otherwise,
it is an error.
-Signed_Off_ByThis option may be used to have a Signed-off-by: line appended
to the change set description.
-No_Signed_Off_ByThis option may be used to prevent a Signed-off-by: line from
being appended to the change set description.
The receive variant takes a change package created by the send variant and creates an Aegis change (see aenc(1)) to implement the change within. Files are added to the change (see aerm(1), aecp(1), aenf(1) and aent(1)) and then the file contents are unpackaged into the development directory.
The change is then built (see aeb(1)), differenced (see aed(1)), and tested (see aet(1)). If all of this is successful, development of the change is ended (see aed(1)). The automatic process stops at this point, so that a local reviewer can confirm that the change is desired.
The aedist command invokes various other Aegis commands. The usual notifications that these commands would issue are issued.
The following options are understood by the receive variant:
-Change numberThis option may be used to choose the change number to be used, otherwise one will be chosen automatically.
-DELta numberThis option may be used to specify a particular delta in the project's history to copy the file from, just as for the aecp(1) command. You may also use a delta name instead of a delta number.
-DIRectory pathThis option may be used to specify which directory is to be used. It is an error if the current user does not have appropriate permissions to create the directory path given. This must be an absolute path.
Caution: If you are using an automounter do not use `pwd` to make an absolute path, it usually gives the wrong answer.
-File filenameRead the change set from the specified file. The default is to read it from the standard input. The filename `-' is understood to mean the standard input.
If your system has libcurl(3), and Aegis was configured to use
it at compile time (this is the default if it is available) you will
also be able to specify a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in place of
the file name. The relevant data will be downloaded.
(The -Verbose option will provide a progress bar.)
-PATchThis option may be used to apply patches from the input, if available. This generally results in fewer merge problems, but it requires the two repositories to be well synchronized. This is the default.
-No_PATchThis option may be used to ignore patches in the input, if any are present.
-Ignore_UUIDThis option may be used to ignore the UUID, if present, of the incoming change set.
-No_Ignore_UUIDThis option force the aedist command to use the change set's UUID. This is the default.
-Project nameThis option may be used to set the project name. If not specified, the project name in the input package will be used, rather than the usual project name defaulting mechanism.
-TrojanThis option may be used to treat the change set as if it had a Trojan horse attack in it.
-No_TrojanThis option may be used to treat the change set as if it definitely does not have a Trojan horse attack in it. Use with extreme care. You need to have authenticated the message with something like PGP first and know the the author well.
Receiving changes by e-mail, and automatically committing them to the baseline without checking them, would be a recipe for disaster. A number of safeguards are provided:
The format of the package is confirmed to be correct, and the package verified for internal consistency, before it is unpacked and acted upon.
The automatic portion of the process stops when development ends. This ensures that a local reviewer validates the change before it is committed, preventing accidental or malicious damage.
If the change seeks to update the project config file, the automatic process terminates before the build or difference occurs. This is because this file could contain trojans for these operations, so a human must examine the file before the change proceeds any further.
There is a potential_trojan_horse = [ string ]; field in the projectconfig file. Nominate build configuration files, shell scripts, code generators, etc here to specify files in addition to the project configuration file which should cause the automatic processing to halt.
The use of e-mail authentication and encryption systems, such as PGP and
GPG, are encouraged. However, it is expected that this processing will
occur after aedist --send has constructed the package and before
aedist --receive examines and acts on the package.
Verification of the sender is the surest defense against trojan horses.
Automatic sending and receiving of packages is supported, but not implemented within the aedist command. It is expected that the aedist command will be used within shell scripts customized for your site and its unique security requirements. See the Aegis User Guide for several different ways to do this.
In a distributed development environment, it is common for change sets to eventually be propagated back to the originator. There are situations (particularly in some star topologies) where several copies of the package will return to the originator.
If these change sets are not detected at the review stage, and are propagated out yet again, there is the possibility of an exponential explosion of redundant packages being distributed again and again.
To combat this, changes are checked after the files are unpacked, but
before and build or difference or test is performed. The “aecpu
--unchanged” command is used to exclude all files that the local
repository already has in the desired form. If no change files remain
after this, the change is dropped entirely (see aedbu(1) and
aencu(1)).
If you are tracking a remote site which makes a project available via the
aeget(1) web interface, you can automatically synchronize with the
remote site using the aedist -replay command.
For example, Aegis developers can track the master project with
a command of the form:
aedist -p aegis.4.22 --replay -f aegis.sourceforge.net
This command is internally rewritten as
aedist --replay -p aegis.4.22 -f \
http://aegis.sf.net/cgi-bin/aeget/aegis.4.22/?inventory
If your cgi-bin directory is somewhere else, you will need to
use the long form.
The change set inventory page is human readable if you want to see what it contains. The links on this page provide all the information necessary to download any of the change sets listed.
This command reads the list of change set UUIDs from the remote repository, and compares it with the list of change set UUIDs in the local repository, and fetches any that are not present locally.
Each of the change sets required are downloaded and unpacked by issuing
a command such as
aedist -rec -f \
http://aegis.sf.net/cgi-bin/aeget/aegis.4.19.C010/?aedist
If this completes successfully (and it is possible it won't,
either because of trojan warnings, or some conflict between local
changes and the imcoming remote changes), and your project has its
develop_end_action set to goto_awaiting_integration,
the change will be integrated using a command such as:
aeintegratq -p aegis.4.22 -c 10
and then starts over again for the next missing change set.
This command will attempt to use the same change number as in the remote repository, if it is available.
The following options are understood by this variant:
-EXclude_UUID UUIDThis option may be used to exclude some change sets from being downloaded and unpacked. This option may be used more than once.
-No_EXclude_UUID UUIDThis option may be used to explicitly list change sets to be downloaded and unpacked, to the exclusion of all others. This option may be used more than once.
-EXclude_version patternThis option may be used to explicitly exclude some change set from being downloaded and unpacked. The pattern is matched against the version as displayed in the inventory. This option may be used more than once.
-INclude_Version patternThis option may be used to explicitly list change sets to be downloaded and unpacked, to the exclusion of all others. The pattern is matched against the version as displayed in the inventory. This option may be used more than once.
-File filenameRead the change set from the specified file. The default is to read it from the standard input. The filename `-' is understood to mean the standard input.
If your system has libcurl(3), and Aegis was configured to use
it at compile time (this is the default if it is available) you will
also be able to specify a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in place of
the file name. The relevant data will be downloaded.
(The -Verbose option will provide a progress bar.)
-MAXimumThis option may be used to download as many changes as possible by exclusing the maximum number of local changes sets, by excluding both local change sets UUIDs (the default) but also excluding UUIDs mentioned in change "original-uuid" attributes.
-PErsevereThis option may be used to specify that all relevant change sets
should be downloaded, even if some fail. Defaults to the user's
persevere_preference if not specified, see aeuconf(5) for
more information.
-No_PErsevereThis option may be used to specify that the downloading of change
sets should stop after the first failure. Defaults to the user's
persevere_preference if not specified, see aeuconf(5) for
more information.
-Project nameThis option may be used to select the project of interest.
When no
-Project
option is specified,
the
AEGIS_PROJECT
environment variable is consulted.
If that does not exist,
the user's
$HOME/.aegisrc
file is examined for a default project field (see
aeuconf(5)
for more information).
If that does not exist,
when the user is only working on changes within a single project,
the project name defaults to that project.
Otherwise,
it is an error.
This option is passed to any aedist(1) commands spawned by this command.
This option is passed to any aedist(1) commands spawned by this command.
If you want to see the change sets that aedist -replay may
download before it goes ahead and does it, you can use a command such as:
aedist --missing -f aegis.sf.net
In particular, this allows you to select apropriate UUIDs for the
aedist -replay -exclude or -no-exclude options.
The following options are understood by this variant:
-EXclude_UUID UUIDThis option may be used to exclude some change sets from being listed. This option may be used more than once.
-No_EXclude_UUID UUIDThis option may be used to explicitly list change sets to be listed, to the exclusion of all others. This option may be used more than once.
-EXclude_version patternThis option may be used to explicitly exclude some change set from being listed. The pattern is matched against the version as displayed in the inventory. This option may be used more than once.
-INclude_Version patternThis option may be used to explicitly list change sets to be listed, to the exclusion of all others. The pattern is matched against the version as displayed in the inventory. This option may be used more than once.
-MAXimumThis option may be used to download as many changes as possible by exclusing the maximum number of local changes sets, by excluding both local change sets UUIDs (the default) but also excluding UUIDs mentioned in change "original-uuid" attributes.
If you want to see the change sets that a remote repository is missing with respect to yours, you can use a command such as: aedist --pending -f aegis.sf.net
The following options are understood by this varian:
-EXclude_UUID UUID
This option may be used to exclude some local change sets from being
listed. This option may be used more than once.
-No_EXclude_UUID UUIDThis option may be used to explicitly list local change sets to be listed, to the exclusion of all others. This option may be used more than once.
-EXclude_version patternThis option may be used to explicitly exclude some local change set from being listed. The pattern is matched against the version as displayed in the inventory. This option may be used more than once.
-INclude_Version patternThis option may be used to explicitly list local change sets to be listed, to the exclusion of all others. The pattern is matched against the version as displayed in the inventory. This option may be used more than once.
The list variant can be used to list the contents of a package without
actually unpacking it first.
The output is reminiscent of the aegis -list change-details output.
The following options are understood by the list variant:
-File filenameRead the change set from the specified file. The default is to read it from the standard input. The filename `-' is understood to mean the standard input.
If your system has libcurl(3), and Aegis was configured to use
it at compile time (this is the default if it is available) you will
also be able to specify a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in place of
the file name. The relevant data will be downloaded.
(The -Verbose option will provide a progress bar.)
-Output filenameThis option may be used to specify the output file. The output is sent to the standard output by default.
The following options to this command haven't been mentioned yet:
-HelpThis option may be used to obtain more information about how to use the aegis program.
See also aegis(1) for options common to all aegis commands.
All options may be abbreviated; the abbreviation is documented as the upper case letters, all lower case letters and underscores (_) are optional. You must use consecutive sequences of optional letters.
All options are case insensitive, you may type them in upper case or lower case or a combination of both, case is not important.
For example:
the arguments "-project, "-PROJ" and "-p" are
all interpreted to mean the -Project option.
The argument "-prj" will not be understood,
because consecutive optional characters were not supplied.
Options and other command line arguments may be mixed arbitrarily on the command line, after the function selectors.
The GNU long option names are understood.
Since all option names for
aegis
are long,
this means ignoring the extra leading '-'.
The "--option=value" convention is also understood.
The file format re-uses existing formats, rather than introduce anything new. This means it is possible to extract the contents of a package even when aedist is unavailable.
The source files and other information is stored as a cpio(1) archive.
The archive is compressed using the bzip2(1) format. Typically primary source files are ASCII text, resulting in significant compression.
The compressed result is encoded using the MIME base64 encoding. This makes the result approximately 33% larger than the compressed binary would be, but still smaller than the primary sources.
The cpio archive is used to store
etc/project-nameThis contains the project name to apply the package to, unless over-ridden by the --project command line option.
etc/change-numberThis contains the change number of the original change, this may be preserved if available on the target repository unless over-ridden by the --change command line option.
etc/change-setThis contains the change attributes and the list of source files and
usages, in aecstate(5) format.
patch/filenameEach modified or renamed file in the package (named in etc/change-set) appears under the patch directory. The file may be empty unless some edits was done on the source repository.
src/filenameEach source file in the package (named in etc/change-set) appears under the src/ directory.
Extra files, or files out of order, are a fatal error.
The aedist command will exit with a status of 1 on any error. The aedist command will only exit with a status of 0 if there are no errors.
See aegis(1) for a list of environment variables which may affect
this command.
See aepconf(5) for the project configuration file's
project_specific field for how to set environment variables for
all commands executed by Aegis.
aedist version 4.22 Copyright (C) 1991-2006 Peter Miller; All rights reserved.
The aedist program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use the 'aedist -VERSion License' command. This is free software and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; for details use the 'aedist -VERSion License' command.
This program evolved through discussion with a number of people. If I have forgotten anyone, it wasn't intentional.
| Ralf Fassel | <ralf@akutech.de> | Catching trojan horses. |
| Walter Franzini | <walter.franzini@sys-net.it> | coding -replay download |
| Florian Xhumari | <Florian.Xhumari@inria.fr> | On the need for pull interfaces. |
| Graham Wheeler | <gram@cdsec.com> | HTTP pull interfacing. |