  MiniReq README

  MiniReq is a tracking system based around this paradigm: people with
  problems or questions send requests via email to a group responsible
  for dealing with those issues.  Those requests are assigned numbers
  that can be tracked and managed in various ways.   The group handling
  the requests needs to have access to a UNIX computer or network.
  ______________________________________________________________________

  Table of Contents:

  1.	Documentation

  2.	Installation

  3.	Overview

  4.	History (req, ReqNG, and MiniReq)

  5.	Requirements

  6.	Not required, but nice

  7.	Who's to blame

  8.	Bibliography
  ______________________________________________________________________

  1.  Documentation

  Other documentation can be found in the docs directory.  For
  installation instructions see install.  For a history of changes see
  changes.  For an introduction on how to use req see intro.  For a copy
  of the License see license.  Things we should have done but haven't
  can be found in todo.  Things other people want us to do but we
  haven't can be found in wish.list.

  2.  Installation

  See the document INSTALL at the top of the MiniReq distribution for
  installation instructions.

  3.  Overview

  MiniReq is a tracking system based around this paradigm: people with
  problems or questions send requests via email to a group responsible
  for dealing with those issues.  Those requests are assigned numbers
  that can be tracked and managed in various ways.   The group handling
  the requests needs to have access to a UNIX computer or network.

  MiniReq is a stripped down version of ReqNG, with various updates to
  the build process and code.

  Reqng in turn borrowed heavily (in influence and source code) from the
  req system from Northeastern University.

  4.  History (req, ReqNG, and MiniReq)

  Req was originally developed by Remy Evard and other members of the
  systems group at Northeastern University's College of Computer Science
  (http://www.ccs.neu.edu) to resolve a number of problems they were
  having with dealing with users requests, problems , moans etc.

  A full account of the rational behind the system was published in the
  Eighth USENIX System Administration Conference (LISA VIII) and can be
  found at http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/remy/documents/req.html
  (Postscript versions are included with the package or can be found at
  ftp://ftp.ccs.neu.edu/pub/sysadmin/req-usenix.ps.gz

  Development at NEU continued until 1994 when req-1.2.7 (based on
  perl4, tcl 7.3 and tk3.6) was released. Remy has moved jobs since then
  and is now working at the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of
  Argonne National Laboratory, he was last heard of on the req mailing
  list in February 1996.

  Since then Unofficial work on req continued, based around the
  req@ccs.neu.edu mailing list with various list members supplying
  patches to allow the system to run under perl5, to add various
  features (areas, search facilities etc) as well as additional
  interfaces and packages based on req, unfortunately no real attempt
  was made to coordinate-ordinate these patches and a large number of
  people using req for the first time stumbled across the same problems
  and produced varying solutions.

  In early 1997 there was a growing demand on the req mailing list for
  further development and eventually a group of users interested in
  further development set up a site and started hacking code.  This project
  was released as ReqNG (Req, the Next Generation), and had a home at
  http://scuttlebutt.explore.com/reqng.

  By 1999, ReqNG had disappeared in the sense that the web site, ftp archive,
  mailing lists were unreachable.  As a user of Req for some time, I have
  released MiniReq as an attempt to make available the minor cleanups and
  improvements to ReqNG which I have made on the systems I maintain.  The
  scope of MiniReq, as the name suggests, is rather smaller than that of the
  ReqNG project -- in particular the various external interfaces to ReqNG
  are not distributed with MiniReq.

  5.  Requirements

  +  Sendmail, or a mailer with alias capability and a sendmail-compatible
     command line

  +  Perl 5.  Earlier or later perl versions may or may not work.

  +  The Date::Manip perl module from http://www.cpan.org/

  +  A C compiler and sh.

  6.  Not required, but nice

  +  Glimpse For indexing and searching the requests.  Available from
     ftp.cs.arizona.edu:/glimpse

  7.  Who's to blame

  Minireq is maintained by Jim Wise (jwise@draga.com).

  The following people were responsible for the creation and development of
  ReqNG.

  +  Paul Lussier plussier@synnet.com

  +  Daniel C L'Hommedieu dcl@explore.com

  +  Steve Rader rader@ssec.wisc.edu http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~rader/

  +  Adam Spiers adam.spiers@new.ox.ac.uk

  +  Iain Rae iainr@civ.hw.ac.uk http://www.civ.hw.ac.uk/~iainr

  8.  Bibliography

  +  Remy Evard "Managing the Ever-Growing To-DO List" LISA 8
     Proceedings pp 111-116
     http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/remy/documents/req.html

  +  Craig Ruenfenacht RUST: Managing Problem Reports and TO-DO Lists"
     LISA 10 Proceedings pp 81-89 http://www.cs.utah.edu/~ruefenac/rust/

  +  John Sellens Adding `Areas' to Req ;login The Usenix Association
     Newsletter Vol 22 Number 1 February 1997
