Re: Mutt dependency on an MTA

[John Galt <galt@inconnu.isu.edu>]

This would be more of an arguement for a MTA being a priority:required
rather than a Depends: on an Extra package.  The other question that this
begs is: Do these other packages that call sendmail depend on a MTA? Not
RECOMMEND, but DEPEND--if not, why the disparity?  BTW you're right that a
MTA is essential, but I'm doubting that it can be said to be a dependency
of a MUA, more like a recommends:  

On Fri, 30 Jul 1999, Carl Mummert wrote:

> 
> >What's the harm in having an MTA installed even if you don't use it? It
> >doesn't interfere. Actually, a few system tasks depend on having an MTA;
> >cron will email you the text output (if any) of your cron jobs, for
> >example. I think a unix system without an MTA would be broken.
> >
> 
> This is correct.  There are lots of programs/scripts that call either
> /usr/lib/sendmail or /usr/bin/mail when they want to send an email message.
> 
> I remember seeing somewhere that '/usr/lib/sendmail is the standard place to 
> look for a sendmail executable' - this is either in the debian policy, or the
> file system heirarchy.  Either way, it implies that every fully functional
> system have a functional /usr/lib/sendmail.
> 
> Carl
> 

Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Who is John Galt?  galt@inconnu.isu.edu, that's who!