Re: Status of qmail?

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 15, 1998 at 12:36:43AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> > Of course it will result in a package that seriously violates our file
> > system layout, but who cares,  it's non-free anyway ;-)
> 
> I do for one..  I'm pretty sure the symlink tree is close enough if
> it's there.  I can already see the "This package is not {FSSTND,FHS}
> compliant" bug.

Unfortunately, I've got a reasonable amount of evidence from Dan's mails that 
he won't accept the symlink idea, as being close enough to qualify for 
distribution under the terms of his var-qmail packages idea.

Either we continue with the qmail-src thing (which is a right pain in the 
arse), or we comply with Dan's wishes, thus violating the Debian file system 
layout.

> Problem is that many users are stuck with smail now because it's the
> default.  Sendmail would be a better default, to say nothing of even exim or
> one of the other MTAs that I've heard of recently.  I -STILL- wonder if
> ssmtp+fetchmail+procmail is not be best way to handle mail on a dialup box
> personally.  Qmail's setup is almost idiotproof, but the above would require
> nothing you couldn't do in postinst if the postinst knew that you'd be doing
> that..

You're suggesting that the qmail postinst moves stuff around after 
installation, to make it fit with the Debian file system layout ?

I direct your attention to:

  From ftp://koobera.math.uic.edu/www/qmail/dist.html:

  (3) the package's creator warrants that he has made a good-faith attempt
  to ensure that the package behaves correctly. It is not acceptable to have
  qmail working differently on different machines; any variation is a bug.
  If there's something about a system (compiler, libraries, kernel, hardware,
  whatever) that changes qmail's behavior, then that platform is not
  supported, and you are not permitted to distribute binaries

I think that makes Dan's intent fairly clear.   Doing sneaky things in the 
postinst seems to violate the ``good-faith'' part of the above.

I suppose that another maintainer could come up with a package 
``qmail-debianise'' that depended on qmail, and moved everything after it was 
installed, but since it is so clearly against Dan's wishes, I think doing so 
would be a bad thing to do.

I cannot say I like the current situation much, but having been involved in it 
for some considerable time, I would suggest you either learn to live with it,
or possibly ignore qmail, and find a decent mailer with a decent license.

Cheers, Phil.



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