C-KERMIT 9.0.304 PRERELEASE TESTING

Fri Jul 20 19:39:51 2012

This is C-Kermit 9.0.304 Dev.02, the first public test version of C-Kermit since the cancelation of the Kermit Project at Columbia University. C-Kermit is Open Source software, released under the modified 3-clause Berkely License. The changes since version 9.0.302 are detailed at the bottom of the NOTES.TXT file, but briefly:

Android support from Tim Sneddon. This follows the Linux path, but has a separate makefile, android.mk. A brief cover note is in the android.txt file, and Tim's story about this came about is here:

http://tim.sneddon.id.au/blog/Posts/C-Kermit_for_Android

Tim's version is based on 9.0.302, whereas the version here also embodies the other recent changes:
C-Kermit 9.0 already worked with OpenSSL 1.0.0, but it did not react well when OpenSSL was updated; C-Kermit would have to be rebuilt each time, even if it was unnecessary according to the post-1.0.0 OpenSSL rules for ABI compatibility. C-Kermit 9.0.304 has new code from Adam Friedlander to perform the check according to the new rules, which weren't set when C-Kermit 9.0 was first released. This way, users of binary-only distributions like Ubuntu Linux won't have C-Kermit stop working for them suddenly for no good reason. So now if C-Kermit was compiled against OpenSSL 1.0.0 or greater, it will disable SSL connections only if the installed version has a different major and minor version number or the installed version is older than the version C-Kermit was compiled against. If C-Kermit was compiled against a 0.9.x OpenSSL version, it will disable SSL connections unless the installed version is exactly the same. Thanks to Jeff Altman for help with this fix.

Problems Fixed:

Crashes when receiving files with Kermit protocol on certain 64-bit platforms such as OpenBSD on Sparc64, caused by conflicting int/long declarations.
Custom builds using certain combinations of feature-selection flags would fail.
Debian Linux builds did not not allow for multiarchitecture libraries. This was fixed in the linux target of the makefile by Ian Beckwith of the Debian Project.

All these need testing.

The test version is packaged as follows:

In ftp://ftp.kermitproject.org/kermit/test/text/ :

README.TXT This file cku304dev02.tar Unix source code, tar archive cku304dev02.tar.Z Ditto, compressed cku304dev02.tar.gz Ditto, gzipped cku304dev02.zip Unix and VMS source code, Zip archive
In ftp://ftp.kermitproject.org/kermit/test/text/ :

Individual source files

The documentation files that accompany a real release are not included, since they have not changed and remain available in the normal places:

http://www.kermitproject.org/ckermit.html (C-Kermit Web) ftp://ftp.kermitproject.org/kermit/ckermit/ (C-Kermit FTP area) ftp://ftp.kermitproject.org/kermit/archives/ (Tar/Zip FTP area)

Executable binaries are not distributed because there is not enough space or bandwidth for them on the Kermit Project's new host. Binaries prior to October 2011 remain available on the Columbia University Kermit website (which is frozen and will not change):

http://kermit.columbia.edu/ (CU Kermit home page) http://kermit.columbia.edu/ckbinaries.html (C-Kermit binaries)

Unpacking and building instructions are here:

http://www.kermitproject.org/ckdaily.html

Briefly: Unpack the archive into a fresh directory and run the build procedure. In Unix do "make linux" (or whatever); in VMS do "@ckvker.com". Upon success, the result will be an executable wermit file (WERMIT.EXE in VMS) in the same directory.

Frank da Cruz New York City

Cka

Install / Use

README