On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 02:10:22AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > But, in the example that you raise, this is an optional configuration. > Indeed, at least at present and in all previous releases of Debian, one > has to go out of one's way to get the lsb-invalid-mta package installed, > since a fully functional mail transport agent providing the sendmail > command is part of a standard Debian installation. You have to go out of > your way to remove it. So the scenario I describe above doesn't really > apply, and the problem reduces to whether the installation of the Debian > lsb-core package should guarantee that a fully functional sendmail program > is present on the system (but possibly not configured), as opposed to > delivering one by default but allowing the local systems administrator to > choose to replace it with a error-producing stub without removing the > lsb-core package. I don't think there's any problem here wrt the LSB standard, but I'm not thrilled about the package-wise implementation of lsb-invalid-mta, particularly from the perspective of a Debian derivative which does not ship an MTA by default. - user installs a stock system with no MTA. - user installs lsb-core so they can install an LSB package - user installs a package that Depends: mail-transport-agent - user gets a system without a usable MTA, only because they installed lsb-core first I would argue that lsb-invalid-mta is a perfectly valid solution for lsb-core, but that it should not Provide: mail-transport-agent - so that any packages that actually say "yes, I require an MTA" get the default MTA and not the lsb-invalid-mta bodge. It's not reasonable for an LSB package which is at arm's length from the system to require a working and configured MTA, but for native packages I think this is legitimate - and installing the MTA by default does require the user to configure it for use. > (It's probably also worth noting that Debian does not claim LSB compliance > and the description of that Debian package states, rather prominently: > "The intent of this package is to provide a best current practice way of > installing and running LSB packages on Debian GNU/Linux. Its presence > does not imply that Debian fully complies with the Linux Standard Base, > and should not be construed as a statement that Debian is LSB-compliant." > So, really, it's kind of hard to see what's notably egregious about this.) Well, I think that package description is silly in its lawyeresque weaselness. The raison d'être of the package is to provide an LSB-compliant layer, which is what it means to support installing and running LSB packages. I don't see any reason the package description should have this long disclaimer about the possibility of bugs in the implementation. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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