To: users, dev, announce
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Apache SpamAssassin 3.3.0-rc1 available

[DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT - NOT YET RELEASED - DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT]

Apache SpamAssassin 3.3.0-rc1 is now available for testing.

Downloads are available from:
  http://people.apache.org/~wtogami/devel/

md5sum of archive files:

[...]

sha1sum of archive files:

[...]

Note that the *-rules-*.tgz files are only necessary if you cannot, or do not
wish to, run "sa-update" after install to download the latest fresh rules.

The release files also have a .asc accompanying them.  The file serves
as an external GPG signature for the given release file.  The signing
key is available via the wwwkeys.pgp.net key server, as well as
http://www.apache.org/dist/spamassassin/KEYS

The key information is:

pub   4096R/F7D39814 2009-12-02
      Key fingerprint = D809 9BC7 9E17 D7E4 9BC2  1E31 FDE5 2F40 F7D3 9814
uid                  SpamAssassin Project Management Committee <private@spamassassin.apache.org>
uid                  SpamAssassin Signing Key (Code Signing Key, replacement for 1024D/265FA05B) <dev@spamassassin.apache.org>
sub   4096R/7B3265A5 2009-12-02

See the INSTALL and UPGRADE files in the distribution for important
installation notes.


Summary of major changes since 3.2.5
------------------------------------

COMPATIBILITY WITH 3.2.5

- rules are no longer distributed with the package, but installed by
  sa-update - either automatically fetched from the network (preferably),
  or from a tar archive, which is available for downloading separately
  (see below, section INSTALLING RULES);

- CPAN module requirements:
  - minimum required version of ExtUtils::MakeMaker is 6.17
  - modules now required: Time::HiRes, NetAddr::IP, Archive::Tar
  - minimal version of Mail::DKIM is 0.31 (preferred: 0.37 or later);
    expect some tests in t/dkim2.t to fail with versions older than 0.36_5;
  - no longer used: Mail::DomainKeys, Mail::SPF::Query
  - if module Digest::SHA is not available, a module Digest::SHA1
    will be used, but at least one of them must be installed;
    a DKIM plugin requires Digest::SHA (the older Digest::SHA1 does not
    support sha256 hashes), so in practice the Digest::SHA is required

- if keeping AWL database in SQL, the field awl.ip must be extended to
  40 characters. The change is necessary to allow AWL to keep track of IPv6
  addresses which may appear in a mail header even on non-IPv6 -enabled host.
  While at it, consider also adding a field 'signedby' to the SQL table 'awl'
  (and adding 'auto_whitelist_distinguish_signed 1' to local.cf);
  See sql/README.awl for details. The change need not be undone even if
  downgrading back to 3.2.* for some reason;

- fixing a protocol implementation error regarding a PING command required
  bumping up the SPAMC protocol version to 1.5.  Spamd retains compatibility
  with older spamc clients. Combining new spamc clients with pre-3.3 versions
  of a spamd daemon is not supported (but happens to work, except for the
  PING and SKIP commands).

- if using one of the plugins (FreeMail, PhishTag, Reuse) which were
  previously not part of the official package, please retire your local copy
  to avoid it conflicting with a new native plugin;

- as the plugin AWL is no longer loaded by default, to continue using it
  the following line is needed in one of the .pre files (e.g. local.pre):
    loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::AWL

- it may be worth mentioning that a rule DKIM_VERIFIED has been renamed
  to DKIM_VALID, to match its semantics;

- due to a change in internal data structure (Bug 6185, 6254), third-party
  plugins which accesss the $pms->{main}->{conf}->{headers_spam} (and ham)
  need to be updated. One such example is the ClamAVPlugin plugin - please
  find a fresh version on its wiki page. It retains backwards compatibility,
  so can be used with both 3.2.5 as well as with SpamAssassin 3.3.0;

- versions of amavisd-new between 2.5.2 and 2.6.1 (inclusive) are incompatible
  with SpamAssassin 3.3; please upgrade amavisd to 2.6.2 or later, or apply
  a workaround https://issues.apache.org/SpamAssassin/show_bug.cgi?id=6257

- support for versions of perl 5.6.* is being gradually revoked
  (may still work, but no promises and no support);

- preferred versions of perl are 5.8.8, 5.8.9, and 5.10.1 or later


INSTALLING RULES

Installing rules from network is done with a single command:
  sa-update

Installing rules from files:
  obtain all the following files:
    Mail-SpamAssassin-rules-xxx.tgz
    Mail-SpamAssassin-rules-xxx.tgz.asc
    Mail-SpamAssassin-rules-xxx.tgz.md5
    Mail-SpamAssassin-rules-xxx.tgz.sha1
      (where xxx may look something like '3.3.0-rc1.r893295')
  obtain a rules-signing key:
    curl -O http://spamassassin.apache.org/updates/GPG.KEY
  import the signing key to a SpamAssassin keyring:
    sa-update --import GPG.KEY
  install rules from a compressed tar archive:
    sa-update --install Mail-SpamAssassin-rules-3.3.0-rc1.r893295.tgz
      (sa-update will need corresponding .asc and .sha1 files with the
       same base name in a currect directory)


MAIN NEW FEATURES

- IPv6 support was substantially improved (see below);

- many improvements to the DKIM plugin (understands author domain signatures,
  supports multiple signatures, ADSP support with overrides) - (see below);

- added 'if can(Class::method)' conditional statement, allowing configuration
  settings to be conditionalised on plugin capabilities without requiring
  new version releases to do so;

- added a configuration option 'time_limit', defaulting to 300 seconds
  or whatever the caller (like spamd) provides; attempting to gracefully
  terminate the checking when a time limit is reached, reporting the score
  and test hits that were collected so far, along with an added hit on
  a rule TIME_LIMIT_EXCEEDED;

- more expensive code sections are now instrumented with timing measurements;
  timing report is logged as a debug message by the end of processing,
  and made available to a caller and to 'add_header' directives through
  a TIMING tag;

- added a configuration option skip_uribl_checks to the URIDNSBL plugin,
  cross-document it with skip_rbl_checks;

- preserve order of declared 'add_header' header fields;

- configurable network mask length for the AWL plugin (see below);

- added support for DCC reputations (see below);

- improved error handling and robustness (see below);

- added timestamps when logging on stderr;

- allowed debug areas to be excluded from debugging,
  e.g.: -D all,norules,noconfig,nodcc


BUILDING AND PACKAGING

- rules are no longer distributed with the package, but installed by
  sa-update

- Makefile.PL has been simplified and a bug fixed in a DESTDIR support
  by increasing the minimum required version of ExtUtils::MakeMaker to 6.17

- tools check_whitelist and check_spamd are now included in the distribution,
  now called 'sa-awl' and 'sa-check_spamd'


WORKAROUNDS TO PERL BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

- modified the Check.pm plugin to produce smaller chunks of source code
  from rules (60 kB) to avoid Perl compiler crashing on exceeding stack size

- localized global variables $1, $2, etc at several places, avoiding taint
  issue from propagating

- avoided Perl I/O bug by replacing line-by-line reading with read() where
  suitable, or played down the EBADF status in other places and only report
  it as a dbg instead of a die - while also providing a little speedup
  (10 .. 25 %) on reading a message

- provided a new sub Message::split_into_array_of_short_lines to split
  a text into array of paragraph chunks of sizes between 1 kB and 2 kB,
  giving less opportunity to runaway regular expressions in rules;
  fixes bugs: 5717, 5644, 5795, 5486, 5801, 5041


MEMORY FOOTPRINT

- as a side-effect of compiling rules in smaller chunks (to avoid compiler
  crashes), virtual memory footprint of SpamAssassin is reduced;

- saved some memory by not importing the Pod::Usage unless it is needed;

- saved 350k+ of memory in sa-compile by replacing DynaLoader with XSLoader;

- removed unneeded index from MySQL bayes_token table;


IPv6 SUPPORT

- added IPv6 support for trusted_networks, internal_networks, msa_networks,
  whitelist_from_rcvd, and other stuff that uses NetSet and the Received
  header field parser, using NetAddr::IP;

- allowed usage of a remote dccifd host through an INET or INET6 socket;

- added IPv6 support to AWL plugin and its utility modules; a network
  mask length is now configurable and defaults to /48, which controls
  what data is stored in an AWL database;

- sql/README.awl and sql/awl_*.sql: increased suggested awl.ip field width
  to 40 characters to be able to hold IPv6 addresses;

- IP_PRIVATE now includes ipv6 variants of private address space,
  as well as the ipv6-mapped ipv4 addresses.

- NetSet now understands that ::ffff:192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.2 are
  the same address;

- IPv6 addresses are now recognised in Received header fields;

- when reading Received header fields, the "IPv6:" prefix is stripped from
  IPv6 addresses, and "::ffff:" is removed from IPv6-mapped IPv4 addresses
  (so strings can match them as simply IPv4 addresses);

- ::1/128 is always included in the trusted_networks/internal_networks set
  similar to 127.0.0.0/8;

- some of the IPv6 functionality in SpamAssassin requires that a perl module
  IO::Socket::INET6 is available (like accessing a DNS resolver over inet6,
  talking to a dccifd host over inet6 socket, SPAMC protocol);


SPAMC

- Mail::SpamAssasin::Client ping may erroneously result in broken pipe;
  bump spamc protocol version to 1.5, updated spamd, spamc and Client.pm;

- added -n / --connect-timeout switch to spamc, allowing separate
  connection timeout from communication timeout;

- added --filter-retries and --filter-retry-sleep

- increased allowed line length in spamc.conf files to 8 KiB and report
  an error when the limit is exceeded

- spamc would not time out connections to a hung spamd, fixed

- spamc client library leaked the zlib compression buffer if compression
  is used

- spamc long option '--dest' was broken


SPAMD

- when spamd is started with the daemonize option do not exit the parent
  until a child signals that it has logged the pid, to allow a wrapper
  script to simply continue immediately after starting spamd;

- additional tempfile cleanup in kill_handler;

- added SPAMD_LOCALHOST option to "make test" to allow specifying
  non-127.0.0.1 IP address for use in FreeBSD jail


API

- adding one optional argument to Mail::SpamAssassin::parse allows caller
  to pass additional out-of-band information to SpamAssassin (such as a
  deadline time, DKIM verification results, information about a SMTP session,
  or dynamic rule hits); this information is made available to plugins and
  the rest of the code through a 'suppl_attrib' hash;

- Plugin::Check - pick up 'rule_hits' from caller via the new mechanism
  and call got_hit() on them;

- simplified adding dynamic score hits and dynamic rules by plugins
  (such as AWL, CRM114, FuzzyOcr, Check) by letting got_hit() accept
  options tflags and description, and letting it store a supplied
  dynamic score for proper reporting;

- let the timing breakdown information be accessible to a caller through
  the existing get_tag mechanism (tag TIMING);

- let the generated header fields ('add_header' configuration options)
  be accessible to a caller through the existing get_tag mechanism
  (tags ADDEDHEADER, ADDEDHEADERHAM, ADDEDHEADERSPAM);


RULES

- rules are no longer distributed with the package;

- new scores have been generated by a GA algorithm and then manually tweaked,
  based on cleaned datasets supplied by a dozen of volunteers;

- dropped redundant rules or rules causing too many false positives;

- added or updated many rules; incomplete list in no particular order:
  vbounce, lotsa_money, muchmoney, image spam, fill_this_form, FreeMail,
  European Parliament, HTML attachments, uri_obfu*, urinsrhsbl, urinsrhssub,
  urifullnsrhsbl, URI_OBFU_X9_WS, rDNS=localhost, INVALID_DATE_TZ_ABSURD,
  KHOP_SC, RCVD_IN_PSBL, FRT_VALIUM*, BOUNCE_MESSAGE, VBOUNCE_MESSAGE,
  __BOUNCE_UNDELIVERABLE, HELO_STATIC_HOST, FILL_THIS_FORM_FRAUD_PHISH,
  CHALLENGE_RESPONSE, DKIM_VALID, DKIM_VALID_AU, DKIM_ADSP_*,
  NML_ADSP_CUSTOM_{LOW,MED,HIGH}, __VIA_ML, MIME_BASE64_TEXT, LOTTO_URI,
  FORGED_MUA_THEBAT_BOUN, FORGED_MUA_THEBAT_CS, UNRESOLVED_TEMPLATE,
  __THEBAT_MUA, __ANY_OUTLOOK_MUA, RP_MATCHES_RCVD, one-word X-Mailer,
  advance_fee update, tweak SPAN rules, tweak skype and misquoted-HTML rules,
  added some new HTML obfuscation and Google feedproxy URI rules, 
  tweak reevolved advance fee second-order metarules,
  added a test rule for postmaster+abuse missing, FROM_MISSPACED, 
  fix FROM_CONTAINS_TAB, added Facebook redirector pattern,
  avoided ISO-2022-JP FPs on TVD_SPACE_RATIO, GAPPY_SUBJECT, PLING_QUERY
  and FM_FRM_RN_L_BRACK rules, FP fix for one-word mails on TVD_SPACE_RATIO,
  RATWARE_BOUNDARY plus variant, supersede all previous RATWARE_OUTLOOK
  stuff, added exclusion for __ISO_2022_JP_DELIM to OBFUSCATING_COMMENT,
  FP in obfuscated URI rule, fixed breakage in tbird image rule, fixed
  SUBJECT_FUZZY_MEDS FP on unobfuscated "meds", added misspaced From header
  field rule, numeric+cctld URI rule, ...

- added PSBL blacklist - http://psbl.surriel.com/

- added support for http://www.spamhaus.org/css/

- replaces HABEAS, BSP and SSC with RP CERTIFIED;

- use ReturnPath's RNBL, replacing SSBL;

- added rule for plain text attachments with octet-stream MIME type;

- avoided false positives on ISO-2022-JP messages in several rules;

- removed massmailers from uridnsbl_skip_domain in 25_uribl.cf;

- updated various default whitelists, uridnsbl_skip_domain, adsp_override, ...


PLUGINS

- new plugins: FreeMail, PhishTag, Reuse
  
- now enabled by default: DKIM

- now disabled by default: AWL

- retired plugin: DomainKeys


AWL PLUGIN

- plugin AWL is now disabled by default;

- added new configuration options auto_whitelist_ipv4_mask_len and
  auto_whitelist_ipv6_mask_len to allow more control on what part of
  an IP address is stored into an AWL database;

- README.awl: increased a suggested awl.ip field width to 40 characters
  to support IPv6 addresses;

- AutoWhitelist.pm: allowed storing a canonicalized IPv6 address, cropped
  to a configurable network mask (previously causing SQL server errors:
  'value too long')

- let AWL with SQL keep separate records for DKIM-signed and unsigned mail
  (when auto_whitelist_distinguish_signed configuration option is true,
  and a field awl.signedby exists);

- avoided a race condition in SQLBasedAddrList.pm when multiple processes
  try to insert-or-update an awl SQL record: trying INSERT first, and if
  that fails go for UPDATE;

- gracefully handle NaN from corrupted database or a broken emulator or
  virtualizer;


DCC PLUGIN

- added support for DCC reputations, added setting dcc_rep_percent,
  new test check_dcc_reputation_range(), new tag DCCREP
  (DCC servers supply reputation data only to licensed clients);

- allowed usage of a remote dccifd host through an INET or INET6 socket;


DKIM PLUGIN

- the plugin is now enabled by default;

- absolute minimal version of Mail::DKIM is 0.31;
  support for ADSP requires Mail::DKIM 0.34;
  a DNS test (and rule) for NXDOMAIN is operational since Mail::DKIM 0.36_5

- a perl module Digest::SHA is required if the DKIM plugin is enabled
  (if a perl module Digest::SHA is available, the module Digest::SHA1
  becomes optional as far as SpamAssassin is concerned (but is still
  needed by Razor agents));

- added support for multiple signatures (useful for whitelisting);

- plugin now distinguishes author domain signatures from third party
  signatures (useful for whitelisting);

- provides a tag DKIMIDENTITY (in addition to DKIMDOMAIN);

- DKIM now supports Author Domain Signing Practices - ADSP (RFC 5617);

- use the Mail::DKIM::AuthorDomainPolicy instead of Mail::DKIM::DkimPolicy,
  when available (since Mail::DKIM 0.34);

- implements an 'adsp_override' configuration directive and adds
  an eval:check_dkim_adsp check, which is used by new DKIM_ADSP_* rules;

- rules contain an initial set of 'adsp_override' directives, listing
  some of the more popular target domains for phishing (applicable only to
  domains which sign all their direct mail with a DKIM or DK signature);

- this plugin can now re-use Mail::DKIM verification results if made
  available by a caller, which saves resources and makes it possible
  for SpamAssassin to work on a truncated large mail without breaking
  DKIM signatures;

- check_dkim_signed and check_dkim_adsp eval rules can now take an optional
  list of domain names, which limits their action to listed domains only.
  It facilitates building DKIM-based rules for specific domains, without
  having to resort to meta rules;

- draft-ietf-dkim-ssp-10/RFC-5617 made Author Domain Signature based on 'd':
  updated ADSP code accordingly; changed whitelisting code to be based on
  SDID ('d') instead of AUID ('i');

- Plugin/DKIM.pm: terminology changes in comments and logging according
  to RFC 5617 and draft-ietf-dkim-rfc4871-errata-07;


BUG FIXES

- fixed Rule2XSBody segfaults;

- no longer treat user data as perl booleans (a string "0" is a false);

- avoid data from the wild be interpreted as perl regular expressions;

- ArchiveIterator: prevent _scan_directory from passing directories
  to _scan_file (on NFS it would fail with EISDIR on read(2);

- fixed vpopmail support;

- fixed incorrect mode bits when creating lock files for AWL;

- fixed some cases where :addr headers were parsed incorrectly;

- fixed leakage of 'whitelist_from_rcvd' entries between spamd users;

- fixing run_and_catch, which failed to catch a non-timed run;

- 127/8 isn't an illegal IP;

- reworked the M::S::Timeout module to deal with nested timers as one would
  expect: an inner timer shouldn't be able to extend an outer timer's limit;
  account for time elapsed in the submitted subroutine when restarting an
  outer timer; reset() should have accounted for time already spent;
  deal with nested timed runs where alarm(0) does not provide remaining time;

- the 'exists:' evaluator in HEADER rules now works as documented
  and tests for existence of a header field, instead of testing for
  a header field body being nonempty; internally, the pms->get can
  also now distinguish between empty and nonexistent header fields;

- applied fixes to header fields parsing in several places: header field
  names are case-insensitive, whitespace is not required after a colon,
  obsolete rfc822 syntax allowed whitespace before a colon;
  VBounce: match "Received:" only at the beginning of a line;

- fixed bug 6237: 2.0.0.0/8 is now an allocated address range,
  fixed RCVD_ILLEGAL_IP with IP 2.0.0.0/8 (and 223.0.0.0/8);

- fixed bug 6205 comment 5 in URIDetail.pm;

- 'pyzor_options' in Plugin/Pyzor.pm was not untainted;

- URIDetail plugin was not taint safe, fixed;

- fixed parsing of multi-line Received header fields for
  BOUNCE_MESSAGE/VBOUNCE_MESSAGE et al;

- Bug 6206, Bug 2536: spamd: untaint directory as obtained from a password
  file or from vpopmail utilities, avoid implicit untainting; report error
  if user preferences file exists but cannot be accessed;

- avoid using raw data from DNS as a regexp in Plugin/ASN.pm;

- ensured the dbg() and info() calls always return the same value (true)
  regardless of log level;

- suppress logging of $& when its value is not available (i.e. when
  no regexp has been evaluated during rule evaluation);

- Exporter never really worked in SA, was not enclosed in BEGIN {};

- masses/runGA and masses/mk-baseline-results: prevent a shell 'source'
  command from loading an unrelated file named 'config' which happens to be
  in the current PATH - must use a ./ in an arg to a 'source' command;


ERROR HANDLING, ROBUSTNESS

- improved error detection and reporting: test status of all system calls
  and I/O operations (or explicitly document where not), and report
  unexpected failures;

- eval calls now check for eval result instead of testing the $@, which
  is not always reliable;

- localized $@ and $! in DESTROY methods to prevent potential calls to eval
  and calls to system routines in code executed from a DESTROY method
  from clobbering global variables $@ and $!;

- Util::helper_app_pipe_open_unix: contain a failing exec with an eval
  to prevent additional cases of process cloning. The exec could fail
  this way when given tainted arguments;

- Util::helper_app_pipe_open_unix: flush stdout and stderr before forking,
  otherwise an error reported by exec (such as 'insecure dependency')
  was lost in a buffer;

- eval-protected an open($fh,'-|') to capture implied fork failures
  due to lack of system resource;

- explicit untainting: combine "use re 'taint'" with untaint_var(),
  avoiding implicit perl untainting, along with workarounds to prevent it;

- added 'use strict' where missing;

- avoided a bunch of warnings on "Use of uninitialized value"

- clearly report reasons for helper application process failures

- t/SATest.pm: provide information about the process failure reason
  if a system() call fails;  improved its reporting of failures;

- improved error reporting in Plugin/DCC.pm on finding a DCC home directory
  to facilitate troubleshooting;


OTHER CHANGES

- pseudoheader "ALL:raw" returns a pristine header section,
  and pseudoheader "ALL" returns a cleaned header section

- total rewrite of URI detection in plain text body;

- many updates to the list of top level domains;

- added 'util_rb_3tld', allowing 3-level TLDs to be listed in URIBLs and
  allowing new 3TLDs to be added from rule updates;

- avoided trusted_networks bog down due to O(n^2) loop with millions
  of entries;

- applied fixes to Plugin/VBounce.pm, updated VBounce ruleset;

- added support for a 'Communigate Pro' Received header field;

- parse Communigate Pro "with HTTPU" auth token;

- let DependencyInfo.pm understand a concept of recommended module version,
  besides a required version;

- provided a workaround for Net::DNS::Packet::new inconsistency;

- let SpamAssassin use either Digest::SHA or Digest::SHA1, whichever is
  available (the Digest::SHA is now a base module since perl 5.10.0);

- improved parsing of eval-type rules: allow unquoted domain names,
  disallow unmatched quotes;

- provided a new module Mail::SpamAssassin::BayesStore::BDB. It should be
  treated as alpha-quality (needs more testing) and is not yet ready for
  production use;

- exposed existing function 'received_within_months' as an eval function
  in Plugin/HeaderEval.pm;

- use /var/lock/subsys/spamd instead of /var/lock/subsys/spamassassin for
  rc script, so that 'service spamd status' will work;

- re-download MIRRRORED.BY files at least once a week, or if
  'sa-update --refreshmirrors' switch is used;

- input delimiter $/ can be corrupted by a plugin, localize $/ and $\ before
  calling a plugin;

- takes almost a minute to start spamd on a slow machine, bumped up the
  retry counter to 180 seconds;

- resolved Bug 5325: syslog severity level in spamc/libspamc.c for max
  message size (changed LOG_ERR into LOG_NOTICE for the message:
  "skipped message, greater than max message size");

- avoid taint warnings if hostname is returned as '(none)';

- produce an error message if an sa-update channel doesn't exist;

- Bug 6150, Bug 6127, Bug 5981, Bug 5950, Bug 6191: let spamd log/report
  a child process exit status or aborting condition in an informative way;

- detect accidental match-everything regexps in rules;

- updated garescorer for 3.3.0: use more epochs in GA runs for better scores;
  clarify some mass-check warning output, ensure rule name always appears at
  start of line; if a rule had no default/existing score in 50_scores.cf,
  don't tell the GA that 1.0 is an appropriate default value, instead pick
  the midway point of its score range. this produces better results;
  remove some dead code from masses/score-ranges-from-freqs;

- report performance as iterations per second in garescorer.c;

- added test to ensure that all config settings are correctly handled when
  switching between users; added more config setting type metadata to enable
  those tests to work; and fix URIDetail to store config on the {conf} object,
  not on the plugin;

- moved 'release tests' to xt/ directory; mirror long-running, net-tests and
  stress tests with xt/50_testname.t scripts to enforce their run before a
  release;

- numerous additional and updated self-tests;

- added a Test::Perl::Critic release-test;

- some code cleanups based on suggestions by a perl module Test::Perl::Critic,
  among others:
  . enable TestingAndDebugging::ProhibitNoStrict test but allow the
    use of 'no strict "refs"';
  . deal with BuiltinFunctions::RequireGlobFunction;
  . deal with ControlStructures::ProhibitMutatingListFunctions
    removing this exception from xt/60_perlcritic.t;
  . deal with BayesStore/BDB.pm, Variables::ProhibitConditionalDeclarations
  . now that the module Time::HiRes is a required module, we can afford
    to replace a select() with Time::HiRes::sleep, and remove exception
    BuiltinFunctions::ProhibitSleepViaSelect from xt/60_perlcritic.t

- documentation was updated, fixing numerous typos and mistakes in
  documentation text and in log messages;

- extensive improvements to development process:
  automated testing through Hudson, improvements to mass-check and rules
