remctl 2.8

Well, that was hideously painful and took the entire day, but remctl 2.8 is finally out. The original motivating force was some completely untested code in the simplified remctl() library interface that exploded if the server returned an error. We ran across that with one of our internal applications that I convered to use remctl, and it has to be fixed for an upcoming rollout.

But, while I was at it, I needed a Perl Net::Remctl binding so that I could avoid passing passwords on the command line, and I wanted to get that into this release. The Perl XS code turned out not to be too bad, although I had to learn a lot more about XS than I previously knew. However, the integration with the build system was, as always, a joy. At some point, I need to try Module::Build and see if it's less retarded than ExtUtils::MakeMaker.

I also merged a UMich patch (with significant modifications) that improves the remctld stand-alone mode, and then when testing the new Perl module, uncovered a bunch of infelicities and problems in the client library that hadn't been previously exposed. So that's now all cleaned up, and finally the new version is out. Hopefully there are no stupid bugs, since I can't afford to spend much more time working on remctl.

You can get the latest version from the remctl distribution page.