On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 08:53:29 -0400, Marc Sherman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >2) The Debian package maintainers have customized and modified the Exim >config mechanisms quite aggressively, in an effort to handhold those >same clueless newbies. By doing so, they've obsoleted much of the >existing documentation and faq material available on the net for exim.
I have to object about that. Most documentation and FAQ material only quote a router, a transport or an ACL snippet, which is as easily put into our configuration scheme as it is in a hand-crafted exim.conf. The issue is that our exim is useable for people who didn't read a line of docs, and simply don't know the difference between a router and a transport. That problem would be there as well if our configuration scheme would operate on a monolithic exim.conf. >This has the effect of steepening the learning curve quite drastically >for people who are just beginning to leave clueless newbie territory. All people need is to read the docs. They don't. >This problem is easily avoided by those with clue, who can simply >install a standard exim config file as /etc/exim4/exim4.conf. All of >the debian config mechanism will still be there on disk, but you can >ignore it. Of course, the _really_ clueful people use the gazillions of hooks that we provide to get their own customized config _and_ our updates to the parts they didn't change. >3) Debian's incredibly long stable release cycles mean that there are >very significant periods of time where Debian will be shipping as >"stable" a very outdated (and possibly buggy) version of Exim. This is >exacerbated by the fact that the actual "make release here" point is >chosen by Debian's release managers without much real warning (or >rather, too much real warning, leading to a wolf-crying situation), and >as a result, Debian will often ship as stable a relatively immature x.x0 >or x.x1 release. Debian potato had exim 3.12, Debian woody shipped with exim 3.35, IIRC, which is hardly a "relatively immature" release, and Debian sarge has 4.50 which works actually very well. >For example, the current Debian stable release >contains exim 4.50. While many of the fixes from 4.51 were backported >into Debian's 4.50 package before Debian went stable, it would probably >have been better served to stick with 4.44, which had had 4 minor point >releases to stabilize before the major new features of 4.50 were introduced. Do you want to maintain the package? If we're doing really as bad a job as you suggest, I'm happy to step back for you. Just say so. >This _will_ be a problem for you if you choose to install Debian stable. Why will it be a problem? Greetings Marc -- -------------------------------------- !! No courtesy copies, please !! ----- Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- ## List details at http://www.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users ## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://www.exim.org/eximwiki/
