As I retrace the steps and patchwork of the early pumpkings, I have had the pleasure to meet and discuss the work with two of them recently, Tim Bunce and Gurusamy Sarathy. Tim was pumpking for the 5.004_* maintenance series and many _50+ releases; Gurusamy looked after a few after Malcolm Beattie. They gave me some hints and tips, particularly explaining what the goodies in Porting/ are about, and clarifications of the attribution styles.
It turns out that the Perforce backing store might be easy enough to trace through, making for a smooth, clean conversion. Extra information will be accompanied with a Catalyst Application. This is in addition to a third-party extraction of the information as performed by John Peacock, and all credits due for performing this conversion in something of record time. More data and conversions are good especially when they can be used to cross-check each other.
