Begin forwarded message:
From: Jeremiah Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: September 21, 2005 1:58:08 PM CEST
To: Marc Haber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Debian exim (was: [exim] which linux for exim)
On Sep 20, 2005, at 5:37 PM, Marc Haber wrote:
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.
So heartwarming to read in black-and-white the deep respect developers
have for users.
By doing so, they've obsoleted much of the
existing documentation and faq material available on the net for
exim.
No, the majority of the documentation is still relevant.
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.
I offer my own experience as case in point. I had virtual users
working within 48 hours of apt-getting exim 4.50, with authentication.
Marc's point is valid, you can run exim out of the box on debian
without any knowledge of SMTP or mail in general.
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 is partly true. The debian documentation is not centrally
located, obtuse, and has tangential relevance to the documentation on
the main exim web site. A smaller spec file is a more realistic option
as is greater participation by the community to maintain wikis etc. I
have followed Marc's suggestion to create a document informing people
of where documentation lives. My preliminary document is here -
http://devmodul.com/documentation/exim/
exim4_debian_documentation.shtml Please note this is a work in
progress.
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.
Clue is an unfortunate term. It is condescending and perjorative. The
issue really is how easy is it to install and run and how clear is the
documentation. To state that all failures running exim4 are due to the
"clueless newbies" is specious and indicative of the willful disregard
free software porgrammers in general have for users. No wonder tools
like Ubuntu are so popular, the world wants to use secure, good
software but installing debian is nearly impossible for many people.
This is not a fault of the users, this is a fault of the developers.
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.
How can debian ship both an "outdated" and "immature" release under
stable? This seems a contradiction.
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.
From my experience, if you can install debian you can install and
maintain exim.
Jeremiah
Jeremiah Foster
http://www.devmodul.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tel/Mobil: +46 (0)730 930 506
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