Bug#122507: ITP: mta-dummy
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
I'd like to discuss the creation of an mta-dummy package.
This package would have no files (except perhaps a small doc), and provide
mail-transport-agent.
The purpose of this package would be for people who install their own MTA
from source. It is a royal pain in the ass installing an MTA from source in
Debian, because lots of packages depend on mail-transport-agent. This pretty
much forces the user to keep a package that provides mail-transport-agent
installed at all times. Keeping another MTA installed on the system just to
make the package management system happy is a waste of space and resources,
and could cause other problems, such as security holes (if the user keeps the
package on hold, preventing security updates from being installed),
interference with the locally-installed MTA, etc..
I made an mta-dummy package a couple years ago using the equivs package, and
it has saved me many headaches, and I've given it to others who were having
the same problem.
If anyone can think of a serious reason that this shouldn't be in the archive
(i.e., other than that you think it's silly, or the standard Packages file
bloat argument), please speak up, otherwise I'll upload this in a week or so.
--Adam
--
Adam McKenna <adam@debian.org> <adam@flounder.net>
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