xref: /freebsd/contrib/file/MAINT (revision 1e413cf93298b5b97441a21d9a50fdcd0ee9945e)
1$File: MAINT,v 1.9 2007/01/19 21:15:27 christos Exp $
2
3Maintenance notes:
4
5I am continuing to maintain the file command. I welcome your help,
6but to make my life easier I'd like to request the following:
7
8- Do not distribute changed versions.
9
10People trying to be helpful occasionally put up their hacked versions
11of the file command for anonymous FTP, and people all over the
12world get copies of the hacked versions.  Within a day or two I am
13getting email from around the world asking me why "my" file command
14won't compile!!! Needless to say this detracts from the limited
15time I have available to work on the actual software. Therefore I
16ask you again to please NOT distribute your changed version. If
17you need to make changes, please add a patch file next to the
18distribution tar, and a README file that clearly explains what you
19are trying to fix.
20
21Thank you for your assistance and cooperation.
22
23Code Overview
24
25This is a rough idea of the control flow from the main program:
26
27file.c	main()
28file.c	process (called for each file)
29		printf file name
30magic.c		magic_file()
31fsmagic.c		file_fsmagic()
32				(handles statbuf modes for DEV)
33			(handles statbuf modes for executable &c.
34			reads data from file.
35funcs.c:		file_buffer()
36compress.c			file_zmagic()
37is_tar.c			file_is_tar()
38softmagic.c			file_softmagic()
39						match() - looks for match against main magic database
40ascmagic.c			file_ascmagic()
41readelf.c		file_tryelf()
42				"unknown"
43
44Christos Zoulas
45christos@astron.com
46