[ITP] Sendmail 8.14.9

D. Boland daniel@boland.nl
Fri Aug 22 18:14:00 GMT 2014


Hi Corinna,

> On Aug 22 07:43, D. Boland wrote:
> > I re-packaged Sendmail with cygport. See:
> >
> > http://cygwin.boland.nl/x86/release/sendmail/
> 
> Packaging looks good in theory.
> 
> Unfortunately we have a problem.
> 
> On inspection of your binary package I noticed that we have conflicts
> with exim and ssmtp packages:
> 
> - /usr/bin/mailq and /usr/bin/newaliases are provided by exim and
>   your sendmail package.
> 
> - /usr/sbin/sendmail is either a binary (sendmail itself) or it will
>   be installed as symlink by either /usr/bin/exim-config or
>   /usr/sbin/ssmtp-config.
> 
> If Christian Franke's postfix port will ever fly, we have YA sendmail,
> mailq, and newaliases symlinks to worry about.
> 
> Exim is Pierre's package and 32 bit only, ssmtp is my package (I had
> to take over because the previous maintainer disappeared) and exists
> for both architectures.
> 
> What we'll have to do to fix this problem is to convert all three
> packages to use alternatives.  The alternatives package exists and is
> already used by a couple of other packages which would otherwise
> conflict, so there's precendent.  And on Fedora, the various mail
> packages all use alternatives, too, to install their packages in
> parallel and conflict-free.
> 
> And no, I'm not overly familiar with alternatives myself, but I will
> convert my ssmtp package ASAP.
> 
> Pierre, any chance you could convert exim pretty quickly as well?
> Otherwise sendmail is hanging in a limbo...

You already guessed it. I don't like it. It's getting very messy this way. Amateur
hour is near...

I'm sorry for the following rant, but I am inclined to defend Sendmail's honour in
the name of its creator, the great Eric Allman.

I am pissed off at those programs. Let them use their own names! I have to rename my
library, but these 'postfix', 'exim' and 'ssmtp' apparitions shamelessly use
Sendmail's program names. As Yaakov puts it in my 'libsuexec' thread: "Deliberately
inciting confusion isn't a good thing."

I always wondered why Exim looks so damn similar to Sendmail. So, let's face it:
there is only one Real mail exchanger, and its name is Sendmail. These other
programs are cheap rip-offs, created by professional spammers te get past its
rigorous rules. 

I've been studying these clones for quite some years via their MIME headers and they
can't do the job alone. Show me a version of Exim running on a server somewhere and
I'll show you a version of Sendmail in the same domain which does the actual mail
exchanging to the outside world.

Mail exchanging is not about putting text on the wire. Any text editor can do that.
Real mail exchanging is about spam control through MIME headers and the clones
really suck at them. 

Ok, that being out of the way: I am running out of time, and I still have to do the
64bit version. I've read the 'alternatives' documentation and it looks nasty: link
groups, master link, slave link, automatic mode, manual mode...

Why not let the user choose one program? Putting both Exim and Sendmail on one box
is confusing, to say the least. Sendmail is very tough to understand. You don't want
another (very similar looking) mail exchanger to add to the confusion.

You really put me on the spot here. Will Sendmail suffer? Will it dream?

Cincerely,
Daniel



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