Manilist
scans a source directory and produces a report on the status of each file:
whether it is up-to-date or not with respect to
patchlevel.h ,
if it is missing from MANIFEST.new, and some other useful information which
may be dynamically configured. It can be use to maintain a MANIFEST.new file,
produce a detailed listing and status of a group of directories, etc... The
rich set of options concur to make manilist a perfect low-level tool.
Under its simplest invocation form at the top level directory of a package,
with no arguments, manilist will scan the MANIFEST.new and produce
a report on the status of each file listed there. Each line starts with a
single character flag which indicates the state of the file, followed by the
name of the file.
What happens in fact is more complex than that. Manilist scans the
MANIFEST.new file and then loops over all the files listed there. Internally,
manilist maintains an inclusion and an exclusion list, both specifying
extensions for files. For instance, the inclusion list could be ('.c', '.h')
and the exclusion ('.o', ',v') so that C sources are included and object
or RCS files excluded. By default, all files but those excluded are used.
Some other selections may be applied at this stage, as will be explained later
on. For those files which pass this selection process, a report is issued
according to a report format, which by default is "A:%c %n".
The letter A (or anything before the initial ':' character is the
file selection specification we've been talking about. The remaining is the
formatting, a string which is printed as-is, modulo some escape sequences.
It so happens that %c is the character flag and %n is the name
of the current file.
Generally speaking, manilist should be regarded as a tool which emits
configurable reports on a set of files, selectively picking them among a list
or by directly scanning the directories to see what's out there...
By specifying a set of directories or files as arguments on the command line,
you restrict the scanning area, limiting to reports concerning those files
or directories. If you do not specify any, manilist restricts its report to
the current directory and its subdirectories, unless the -t option is
given.
OPTIONS
Manilist
recognizes the following options:
-a
Make a report for all the files, regardless of what is specified by
the included and excluded suffix lists.
-b
Assume current directory is the base (root) of the package tree. When this
option is not specified, manilist will look for a .package file
to indicate the root directory of the package (also called the top) and
complain if it does not find it.
-c
Check files against those listed in MANIFEST.new (or whatever file specified
via the -f option) and report discrepancies via the %c macro.
-d
Dump included and excluded suffix lists on stderr, extensions being space
separated. A good way to know the default lists is to run: manilist
-f /dev/null -bd.
-f manifest
Specify an alternate manifest file, the default being to use MANIFEST.new.
-h
Print the usage help message and exit.
-i extensions
Add new extensions to the included suffix list. The extensions argument
must list the suffixes separated by spaces, as in -i '.ph .pl' to add
both .ph and .pl to the existing suffixes. Note that the argument
needs to be quoted to protect spaces against shell interpretation.
-n
Do not use any manifest file. Rather scan the directories and act as with all
the files there were already listed in a manifest.
-p format
Set the new printing format, which has the form selection:string,
with selection being a list of single letters specifying which files
from the manifest are to be used for reports, and string being a
message to print as report, with some macro substitutions. It is also possible
to have column formatting by specifying a '|' inside the string to delimit
the different columns you wish to see. See also -C and -L for
more formatting parameters.
-s string
Specify the string part of the printing format (see -p for a
general description of the format). Available macros are listed further
down the manual page.
-t
Start from the top directory (the root directory of the distribution) regardless
of the current directory. There must be a .package file to indicate
what the top directory is.
-w selection
Specifiy the selection part of the printing format. Available selections
will be discussed later.
-x extensions
Add new extensions to the excluded suffix list. The extensions argument
must list the suffixes separated by spaces, as in -x '.s .p' to add
both .s and .p to the existing list. Note that the argument
needs to be quoted to protect spaces against shell interpretation.
-C separator
Give the column separator, which is to be used in place of the '|' character
in the report format string. By default, it is a single space.
-I included
Specify a new list of suffixes to be included in the reports. This overrides
the original default list (whereas -i is used to add suffixes to
the list). Suffixes must be space separated.
-L colsize
When using column formatting (the '|' character being used to denote columns),
this option may be used to specify the maximum column width, separating each
width by a single ','. Leaving a width unspecified does not impose any limit
on its width. For instance, if the format string is %n|%d|%t, one could
limit the middle column (descriptions from MANIFEST.new) to 40 characters and
the name column (first one) to 15 characters, leaving the last one with no
imposed limits, by using -L 15,40,.
-V
Print version number and exit.
-X excluded
Specify a new list of suffixes to be excluded in the reports. This overrides
the original default list (whereas -x is used to add suffixes to
the list). Suffixes must be space separated.
USING FORMATS
The flexibility of manilist is brought by its use of a dynamic formatting
string for providing its reports. It is possible to specify a format via the
-p option or just parts of it: the text string via -s and the
file selection with -w.
File Selection
The leading part of the formatting string tells manilist which files you
wish to see in the final report. Available selectors are:
A
All the files but the excluded ones (i.e. those files whose suffix is listed
in the exclusion list). This is the default action.
a
All the files included and/or excluded (shortcut for ix). Note that files
which are neither included nor excluded will not appear in the report.
d
Report only for directories.
f
Report only for files.
i
Only included files are listed.
m
Only those files or directories found in the manifest are listed.
n
Only those files or directories not found in the manifest are listed.
x
Only excluded files are listed.
When you specify more than one letter, the resulting report depends on the
nature of the selection. For d, f, m and n, a logical
union is performed. This means specifying fd or mn is the same
as not specifying anything, but it's less efficient since manilist is
forced to perform the checks it would otherwise bypass. The i and x
selectors are special: by default, all the files not excluded are reported.
Specifying x also asks for excluded files. Specifying i restricts
the report to the included files. Using both at the same time (ix) will
force a report for files which are included or excluded.
Macro Substitution
The string part of the report format can make use of the following macros:
%c
A character coding the status of the file.
%d
Description from the manifest file, if any.
%n
Name of the file (its path from the top directory).
%s
Size of the file, in bytes.
%t
Time stamp of the last modification.
File Status
The %c macro, giving a single character coding the file status, can
expand into one of the following.
.
The file is up to date (not newer than patchlevel.h).
-
The file is present in the manifest but is missing.
>
The file has been modified since last patch (newer than patchlevel.h).
+
The file exists but is not listed in the manifest.
o
The file exists but is not listed in the manifest and is older than
patchlevel.h
x
The file is listed in the manifest and exists, but has been excluded. Naturally,
this will appear in the report only if the x selector is given in the
report format.
?
The file is listed in the manifest, does not exist, and was excluded.
EXAMPLES
The command
manilist -ct -p 'ni:%n'
will list all the source files from your distribution which are not listed
in your MANIFEST.new file. Note that this includes only "source" files, that
is to say files whose extension is listed in the inclusion list.
If you do not wish this restriction, replace the formatting string with
n:%n (only the excluded files will not appear).
To build an initial MANIFEST file, use:
manilist -n -p 'Af:%n' > MANIFEST
from the top directory. You will eventually want to fill in descriptions for
each file listed in the manifest.
FILES
MANIFEST.new
Default manifest file, listing files and giving a small description for each
of them.