CFC

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Updated: local
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

cfc - Sendmail cf file compiler

SYNOPSIS

cfc [ -c ] < sendmail.cf-file > ease-source-file

DESCRIPTION

Cfc is a filter that reads a raw sendmail(8) configuration file on its standard input, and produces almost useable ease(1) source on its standard output. It is designed as a conversion tool, to translate an existing sendmail.cf file into ease with the idea that all future work will be done in ease. Cfc passes all comments through to the output, and converts all predefined sendmail macros, options, option values, and mailer flags into the names used by ease. Once it is through, the user need only spend some time in a good screen editor doing the following:

: Changing the RULESET_n names into more descriptive names, and adding ruleset bindings. Applying quoting to necessary string literals, principally in the definitions of headers. The ease documentation on header formats should be consulted. Adding new field names. Cfc just uses very generic field names, everywhere, when names like ``user,'' ``host,'' and ``relay'' might be more descriptive. Miscellanious formatting. Cfc introduces tabs on its own, as well as often passing through tabs from the sendmail input. It will also print a header for each different type of line, e.g. if the input had seven O (option) lines, there will be seven option blocks. These are usually succesive, and can therefore be merged. Finally, the block close on rulesets often comes after the comments that precede the next ruleset or mailer specification.

In short, cfc does over 90% of the tedious work of translating a sendmail.cf into ease format. The rest of the work can be done in a day or less. Suprisingly, the combination of cfc and ease can find bugs in a current sendmail.cf file! Cfc takes one option, -c, which indicates it should run in 4.2BSD compatibility mode. In this case, options and mailer flags which are new in the 4.3BSD version of sendmail will not be recognized.

DIAGNOSTICS

``Routine: malformed input line line: fatal error'' for input it doesn't understand. Routine is the name of the routine in cfc which choked, and line is the line number in the input.

BUGS

Only recognizes continuation lines (lines that begin with a TAB) for header (H) and mailer (M) definitions.

AUTHOR

Arnold Robbins
Emory University Computing Center
arnold@emory.edu

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 06:31:51 GMT, December 12, 2024

CFC