Bug#90287: [PROPOSAL] require the use of $MAIL

[Arthur Korn <arthur@korn.ch>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.5.2.0
Severity: normal

Hi

In the discussion about changing our default mailbox location it became clear
that there are some packages that don't use $MAIL at all. This is seriously
broken behaviour, and can make it very hard to use alternative mailbox setups.

Reading up about this in the policy, I noticed that it states in section 12.6,
paragraph 2:

# The mail spool is /var/spool/mail and the interface to send a mail message
# is /usr/sbin/sendmail (as per the FHS). The mail spool is part of the base
# system and not part of the MTA package.

This sounds af it was allways /var/spool/mail, and considering $MAIL was not
really necessery. I propose that this be changed to:

# The mail spool is $MAIL with a fallback to /var/spool/mail. The interface to
# send a mail message is /usr/sbin/sendmail (as per the FHS). The mail spool is
# part of the base system and not part of the MTA package.

ciao, 2ri