sendmail 8.13 Companion

Chapter 1. Release Notes

Each release of sendmail is packaged with a file called RELEASE_NOTES, located in the top level of the source distribution. The RELEASE_NOTES file itemizes new features that have been added to each particular version of sendmail since Version 8.1 (released in 1993). This file is very complete but, on the downside, can be difficult to parse.

In this chapter, we first show you the parts of a RELEASE_NOTES file, then we provide the code for a short program that makes reading the RELEASE_NOTES file easier.

Parts of RELEASE_NOTES

Basically, the RELEASE_NOTES file is divided into sections, each of which deals with a separate release of sendmail. These sections are left-justified in the file. Each begins with a single line that contains the version number of the sendmail release, followed by a slash, followed by the version number of the configuration file release, followed by the date of the release. For example:

8.13.0/8.13.0   2004/06/20

Here, the first release of the V8.13 series (8.13.0) is indicated. The release of sendmail and its configuration file are the same. The date of the release is in the form year (first), month, and day.

Each such release section is then followed by indented sections that document a change in the sendmail binary. Some indented sections are prefixed with a keyword and colon. For the most part, those keyword sections describe a change in something other than the binary^[1] and can look like this, for example:

SECURITY: Some security matter ...