RE: [DEBIAN] Why does sendmail depend on procmail?
On Tue, 7 Oct 1997, Michael Meskes wrote:
> How about creating a virtual package mda that's provided by both. Also
> both should use update-alternatives to create a binary (link) that's
> called mda (or so). This binary may then be called by sendmail via
> sendmail.cf.
Before this, sendmail depended on deliver or procmail. This however
created a situation where procmail could be replaced by deliver (or the
other way around) without the sendmail config changing. This would break
mail setups rather silently.
The problem with making an "mda" link is that procmail and deliver don't
support the same option set. They are not really alternative interfaces
(like mawk and gawk for instance), but two different programs that
accomplish the same thing. Sendmail needs to know which one it is using.
I'm the current deliver maintainer. However, if anyone with more interest
in actually using deliver wants to take it over, I'll be glad to give it
up. I use procmail for my delivery and couldn't care less if sendmail
stops using deliver and we abandon it. It might be an interesting
exercise for someone to match mail.local from the sendmail source to do
debian-style mailbox locking and include it with sendmail for people who
don't want either.
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