This directory contains a rudimentary kit maker. N.B.: This must not be confused with the kit package, which is a set of shell scripts for sending arbitrary files and directories by mail and unpacking them. One could call kit a binary tarmailer. The kit package has been released separately from dist (posted on comp.sources.unix in 1991). Larry Wall said: Depending on where you are going to send your kits you might prefer to use Rich $alz's kit maker instead--it makes more robust kits but assumes more about the target system. I say: If you are using RCS 4.3, be sure to use makedist instead of your own shell archiver, unless you do not use $Id, $Header or $Locker markers. Moreover, makedist will take the latest checked in revision intead of the working file, so that you archive a coherent package even if you made some mods since the last patch. You run makedist in the top level directory of your package and it uses the MANIFEST.new file to generate shar scripts of about 50000 bytes each. Just make sure MANIFEST.new contains everything you want, including any Configure, config.h.SH, or patchlevel.h files. A prototype patchlevel.h may be found in ../gen/patchlevel.h. See the manpage for more details. If you do not wish to build up shell archives but an up-to-date copy of your source tree, run someting like: makedist -c dir to build an up-to-date source tree in dir, which you can then archive using your own shell archiver.