[FYI] Working around a broken BFAV client

Ken Causey ken at kencausey.com
Mon Sep 20 15:09:10 UTC 2004


It's bound to happen, for one reason or another the BFAV client (or
server) is broken and it looks like its all going to crash to a halt. 
But this does not have to be the case.  Everything available through the
BFAV client is available in other ways, albeit much more inconveniently.

1.  All posts go through one of two lists.  Each of these lists has
archives:

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-harvest/

Google should be indexing these, so with any luck a well-formed Google
search query (hint: +site lists.squeakfoundation.org) will return
valuable info.

2.  The info that the BFAV client accesses is on an HTTPD server and you
too can pretend to be a BFAV client.

  a.  The listing of all posts contained in the database can be found at

      http://bfav.squeakfoundation.org/listing.zip

      The format is intended for parsing by the BFAV client but it's not
completely unreadable:

      24496:[ENH] Add player's textual reference into
workspace:4:0:0:Takashi Yamamiya <propella at yuri.sakura.ne.jp>:Mon, 20
Sep 2004 00\c36\c53 +0900

     There are multiple fields seperate by colons.  The first field is
the ID of the report within the 'database'.  The second field is the
subject of the email.  If you see a \c that is a colon (a \\ is a single
\).  The second to last field is the sender and the last is the date and
time.  Don't worry about the other fields.

  b.  If you need to download a message from the database you can get
the appropriate filename using a simple CGI program.  For example if you
want to retrieve 24496 you would type into a web browser

     http://bfav.squeakfoundation.org/getPosts.cgi?from=24496

     And at this moment that returns:

     latest.zip

     Another example

     http://bfav.squeakfoundation.org/getPosts.cgi?from=10345

     returns

     10301-10400.zip

     You can then retrieve these with

     http://bfav.squeakfoundation.org/latest.zip

     and

     http://bfav.squeakfoundation.org/10301-10400.zip

     The zip files contain .eml files which are just text files of the
raw emails received through the list.  If you need to get an attachment
out of one of these its a hassle compared to getting it from the list
archives but can be done with MIME tools which can be found on the net.

3.  Just because the BFAV client is down does not mean that you can't
still send in reports.  For the most part this is still done as it
always was done and can still be done manually.  Find details at

    http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/398

    http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3152

    http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3103

The moral of this story is that there is always a way.  Or to put it
more clearly, just because the BFAV client may be broken doesn't mean
the work can't go on.

Ken Causey
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