Re: qmail and related packages in NEW
On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 03:33:43PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Joerg Jaspert:
> > First - the packaging is nowhere near the standard Debian aspires to in the
> > archive:
> >
> > Qmail is an MTA and as such should follow Debian Policy (for example Section
> > 11.6). It's therefore not a very good start that an MTA package needs
> > additional packages (qmail-run) installed to perform the minimal tasks
> > required of mail-transport-agent, and yet another package (fastforward) to
> > support /etc/aliases.
>
> Yuck. I wasn't aware of that. So the security discussion was kind of
> a red herring, after all.
Hi, how exactly is that a policy violation?
Please see the answer to that paragraph in my reply (including full
quote) to the rejection mail
http://lists.debian.org/debian-wnpp/2008/09/msg00055.html
On Mon, Sep 01, 2008 at 10:36:07PM +0000, Gerrit Pape wrote:
> Hmm, the MTA package actually is qmail-run, as can be read from the
> README.Debian's in the qmail-run and qmail packages. And qmail-run
> needs the qmail package, which provides the qmail programs and queue
> structure, as well as the fastforward package, which provides support
> for the /etc/aliases database. I can't see anything wrong with this, to
> the contrary, the modularity of the packages provides more flexibility,
> e.g.:
>
> o users can install the qmail package without the qmail-run package to
> configure qmail as MTA manually, next to another MTA package already
> installed on the system
> o users can install the qmail package without the qmail-run package if
> they wish to use some programs from the qmail package, e.g.
> qmail-popup and qmail-pop3d, and wish to have a different default
> MTA installed, such as postfix
> o users can disable the /etc/aliases support, and switch to a different
> alias handling if they like; the package providing the /etc/aliases
> database support can then be removed from the system
I still think this is a good thing, providing valuable flexibility to
the users. What problem do you see? Is it that the packages are
modularised, and not a single monolithic qmail package? Is it the
name?, should the 'qmail-run' MTA package named 'qmail', and the current
'qmail' package 'qmail-core' or so?
BTW, I maintain several packages in the Debian archive already that do
just the same, a package containing the programs, and a separate package
that provides the service. So I can happily run bincimap next to
dovecot, and twoftpd next to some other ftp server, on the same machine.
Users repeatedly request such thing, e.g.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01308.html
I know about that opinion
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01329.html
but actually nothing came up within three years
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=500176
Regards, Gerrit.
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