Bug#381100: release-notes: update path for exim => exim4 needs documenting
Package: release-notes
Severity: normal
Hi,
in etch, support for exim 3 will cease to exist one way or the other.
Which way it will cease to exist is currently in the hands of the
stable release team, depending on whether they approve a changed exim
3 package in the next stable point release or not.
currently, Debian etch still contains a package of exim 3, an outdated
version of our Default MTA which is still in wide use, but has been
unsupported by upstream for years. Even its maintainer has stopped
using it in the mean time, so exim 3 users _really_ _really_ should
upgrade.
Unfortunately, there is no clear upgrade path from exim 3 to exim4.
In coordination with the exim 3 and the exim4 team, in June 2006 I
NMUed exim3 in sid with a new description that strongly discourages
using exim 3 and strongly _en_courages updating to exim4. This package
has migrated to etch in the mean time. The exim3 packages have been
displaying a similiar warning on installation and/or upgrade since
March 2005.
My communications with the release team in early 2006 have outlined
the following steps.
(1) Get exim3 with the warning description into etch
(2) Update exim3 with the warning message in sarge via s-p-u and a
point release.
(3) Get the "exim 3 is unsupported, update to exim4 manually ASAP"
message inluded in the etch release notes.
(4) Get exim 3 removed from etch and sid.
Step (1) is done, I am now ready to proceed with (2). Unfortunately,
it is currently unclear whether (2) will be approved by the SRM team.
This message's objective is now (3). The release note message should
include the following things:
- the exim 3 => exim4 update can be done while sarge is still installed.
- if the exim 3 configuration was created with eximconfig, exim 3's
configuration tool in Debian (which is used on package installation
by default), and the exim 3 configuration is still around on exim4
installation, exim4's maintainer scripts do a pretty good job to
parse the information that was given to eximconfig from exim 3's
configuration to pre-seed the debconf driven configuration. In the
majority of cases, exim4's debconf questions will already have the
correct answers filled in.
- There is a tool, exim_convert4r4, delivered with exim4 (in the
exim4-base package), which can convert an exim 3 configuration in
the format needed by exim4. This tool is, however, unsupported both
by upstream and the Debian exim4 maintainers, and it is not advised
to use its output verbatim as exim4 configuration as all Debian
magic is lost this way.
- For more complex exim 3 configurations, the recommended way is to
use exim_convert4r4 with a scratch file as target to get a feeling for
what exim4 configuration might be useful to emulate exim 3's behavior,
and then to manually build an exim4 configuration with the features
by the local site.
- The exim 4 README.Debian file installed to
/usr/share/doc/exim4-base/README.Debian.* has more information about
updating from exim 3.
It is not yet clear what's going to happen if the local admin doesn't
manually update exim 3 to exim4 when going to etch. Depending on the
decision made by the SRM team, it might be that etch will release
without exim 3 at all. In these cases, sarge's exim 3 will stay
installed and keep working, but there won't be any support (including
security) at all. If etch releases with exim 3, we'll play the same
game with etch+1 (this time without the SRM team's cooperation
needed).
In both cases, it would be great to have this mentioned in the etch
release notes, but the exact wording would depend on whether etch will
actually have an exim 3 package or not.
I am willing to deliver release notes text on request. Delivering that
text is considerably easier if someone points me to the current draft
text of the release notes to have a style example.
Greetings
Marc
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