Conflicting alternatives (was: Debian switchable MTA mechanism)
> Therefore, you'll find apretty advanced alternatives system
> for client-y stuff in Debian (editor, MUA, what not) but
> not for server-y stuff.
Hmm... so that's your take on it?
Maybe you're right. I was thinking of the display manager as
a counter-example (you can install lxdm, gdm, and others simultaneously
even though you can only use one at a the same time), but you might
argue that it's not "server-y stuff".
Still, there is to me no good reason not to allow installing both exim
and postfix at the same time. I think it's just a tradeoff between how
often this could be useful and how much work it takes to tweak the
packages.
Also, as someone who happens to prefer Postfix to Exim (no particular
reason: I'm just familiar with Postfix and not with Exim), I'm actually
happy that `apt install postfix` gets me rid of Exim instead of having
it linger uselessly.
But I do think Debian's packaging system should be improved to
accommodate such needs: it should be possible and easy to override
conflicts so as to force-install both Postfix and Exim (for instance).
[ and I don't mean it just when you install the second package, but
also during the rest of the lifetime of the system, until you remove
the override. ]
Stefan
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