Thank you Thore,
Preserving 2.3, while maintained, to provide replication
functionality is much appreciated. Smart move. Draft of announcement
seems fine.
(posted to arch-general as no reply capability to arch-dev-public)
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: News draft: dovecot >= 2.4 requires manual intervention
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2025 19:54:34 +0100
From: Thore Bödecker <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Hi folks,
the upstream dovecot 2.4 branch comes with handful of breaking
changes, mostly concerning configuration semantics and syntax.
For this, upstream provides a migration guide [1].
We've kept dovecot 2.4.1 in [testing] for quite some time and it
received a decent number of signoffs.
There was already a bit of chatter on arch-general regarding the
availability of a dovecot 2.4 package in [extra].
While slightly unintentional, I've built and pushed todays upstream
release version 2.4.2 to [extra].
However, there is a feature disparity: the 2.4 branch no longer
supports replication.
My own setup relies on that particular feature and I've grown quite
fond of it, so I'm a bit sad to see it going away.
As per upstreams EOL announcement [2], the 2.3 branch is supposedly
going to receive critical secrity fixes, which I considered "maintained
enough" to warrant packaging it separately until upstream fully drops
it.
The following packages are now available in [extra]:
- dovecot23
- pigeonhole23
- dovecot23-fts-elastic
- dovecot23-fts-xapian
Where applicable, they are configured with the necessary
conflicts/provides.
The most recent dovecot-2.4.2-3 build also contains the following
dovecot.install notice:
==> Dovecot 2.4 is incompatible with older configurations and requires manual
intervention.
==> Refer to
'https://doc.dovecot.org/latest/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html' for
upgrading instructions.
==> Alternatively, there is a dovecot23 (and pigeonhole23) package available.
Given the fact that any dovecot 2.4 binary *will not* start
with a <= 2.3 configuration file, it seems reasonable for us
to publish an announcement to make users aware of this situation
while also informing them about the alternate 2.3 packages we provide.
News draft below.
----8<----
# dovecot >= 2.4 requires manual intervention
The dovecot 2.4 release branch has made breaking changes which result
in it being incompatible with any <= 2.3 configuration file.
Thus, the dovecot service will no longer be able to start until the
configuration file was migrated, requiring manual intervention.
For guidance on the 2.3-to-2.4 migration, please refer to the
following upstream documentation:
[Upgrading Dovecot CE from 2.3 to
2.4](https://doc.dovecot.org/latest/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html)
Furthermore, the dovecot 2.4 branch no longer supports their
replication feature, it was removed.
For users relying on the replication feature or who are unable to
perform the 2.4 migration right now, we provide alternative packages
available in [extra]:
- dovecot23
- pigeonhole23
- dovecot23-fts-elastic
- dovecot23-fts-xapian
The dovecot 2.3 release branch is going to [receive critical security
fixes](https://dovecot.org/mailman3/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/3P45L76DOC3NKUNSSPIXQNKINGOCYH5K/)
from upstream until stated otherwise.
---->8----
[1] https://doc.dovecot.org/latest/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html
[2]
https://dovecot.org/mailman3/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/3P45L76DOC3NKUNSSPIXQNKINGOCYH5K/
Cheers
--
Thore "foxxx0" Bödecker
GPG ID: 0xEB763B4E9DB887A6
GPG FP: 051E AD6A 6155 389D 69DA 02E5 EB76 3B4E 9DB8 87A6
--
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
