Re: Should MUA only Recommend mail-transfer-agent?

[Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>]

Artur R. Czechowski wrote:
> I've found your bugreport:
> http://bugs.debian.org/202869
> 
> I see no issue to not depending mutt on mail-transfer-agent.
> 
> Mutt as is, is a software for reading, writing and sending emails.
> And to provide a full functionality it needs a kind of transfer-agent.
> 
> I am not convinced to only Recommend on mail-transfer-agent. I rather
> tend to closing this wishitem or tag it as wontfix.

I agree.  The main functionality of Mutt is to read *and* send mail.
Being able to only read mail archives is not the main functionality
but a backup functionality.  To be able to provide the main
functionality, an MTA is required, hence a dependency.

Joe Average User would most probably be pissed if he installed mutt
but doesn't have an MTA and then tries to send mail.  That would take
us back into the old days of Slackware.

Those of us who have a host that doesn't contain an MTA (and hence no
cron) but want to have mutt installed, should use equivs to provide a
fake MTA.  Those usually also have the knowledge how to use equivs (or
read the manual), so it's no problem for those.

Regards,

	Joey

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