Re: Debian switchable MTA mechanism
Kevin Shell wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 16, 2021 at 11:29:54AM +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > On Ma, 16 feb 21, 16:37:20, Kevin Shell wrote:
> > > Hello Debian Users.
> > >
> > > Why Debian does't have a switchable MTA mechanism
> > > to allow install multiple MTAs at the same time?
> >
> > Why do you need this?
> >
>
> For convenience when one evaluating or learning
> between multiple MTAs etc.
You have an unusual use-case.
> > > Fedora, Centos etc. allow users to install multiple MTAs at the same
> > > multiple MTAs at the same time.
> > > There's a "alternatives --config mta" command
> > > to allow to choose between alternative MTA.
> >
> > Installing and removing/purging packages has traditionally been very
> > easy in Debian,
>
> removing/purging one MTA & reinstalling another MTA in the above
> situation is unnecessary and inconvenient.
Don't purge them. Just install each of them in turn. Then the
command to move to the next one is
apt install MTA-NAME
which shouldn't even incur any network traffic, since you have
them all in /var/cache/apt/archives, and will not overwrite any
config files without reason.
(You should probably install etckeeper or a similar mechanism
for keeping track of config files.)
> >such a mechanism would have limited benefits for
> > significant added complexity.
> >
> Is this a difficult task?
> Isn't Debian already has a /etc/alternatives/ mechanism?
You may be the first person to ever ask for such a thing. That
doesn't make it difficult, it just makes it not currently a
feature.
-dsr-
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