Re: Build-Depends on source of a different package?
Hello,
I'd like to move this discussion to the exim4debian ml.
On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 02:23:41PM +0100, Simon Richter wrote:
>> If you're wondering: The package in question would be exim v4 with the
>> exiscan patch applied. - It cannot simply be built from the exim4
>> source-package because the patch is released more often than exim
>> itself (current-version is already 4.12-24).
> Hrm, what does it need the patch for. I can understand that
> configuration file changes might be needed, but a patch?
The way exim is designed adding new configuration-variables to the
config-file requires patching the source.
Crosschecking againsts exim-sa: it should be possible to change exiscan
to use its own configfile instead.
> Would it be possible (in cooperation with upstream) to split the
> package into stuff that can be applied upstream, does not change
> often and can be optionally switched on an off ("stable API") and
> stuff that changes often and thus should not be compiled directly
> into a mission critical piece of software anyway?
I've browsed over the patch and didn't actually try to understand that
but my educated _guess_ is that the exiscan-patch basically copies the
whole local_scan interface to a new name "exiscan". The real
functionality is then in exiscan.c.
It might be possible to let the real exiscan-code be dlopened similar
to Marc Merlin's dlopen-patch for local_scan
> Since there will probably be multiple exim packages, this would
> effectively double their number again (exim4-tls-ldap-noexiscan, sigh).
> So it would be better to have a real virus scanner API and make exiscan
> plug into that instead of inventing workarounds for broken design.
This argument strikes me as a strong one.
cu andreas
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