On Fri, Jan 26, 2001 at 01:59:09PM +0000, Steve Mynott wrote:
> Rob Partington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> > Steve Mynott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > > On RedHat I can do something like 'rpm -e sendmail' to clean up before
> > > installing qmail and, alas, I can't do this on OpenBSD (although there
> > > has been talk of extending the binary packages to include the base
> > > OS).
> >
> > If you install the postfix package, you get a script which switches your
> > system mailer between postfix and sendmail. Much nicer than "rpm -e",
> > because if you then don't get on with postfix, just run postfix-disable
> > and you get sendmail back.
Under FreeBSD, you've got sendmail-wrapper instead, which you can
configure to point to any installed file.
> I don't want to have to install another MTA in order to remove the
> existing one, what if I don't want one installed at all?
>
> I would rather have a single line command able to remove any arbitary
> package of system files (like the supplied Perl to replace by your
> own?) than what you describe, which isn't a general solution to this
> problem but rather a feature of one program.
>
> IMO a proper binary package manager is still nicer because it also
> allows you to easily list and verify each file in the bundle against a
> checksum database.
That's all very well and binary orientated to say, but on a BSD system,
you tend to use source updates, period. And then the packages database
gets out of date, because the source code has been rebuilt, and
reinstalled. It's doable, but there are tricky issues involved,
such as trying to integrate it into the BSD build system (and make world
takes long enough already!).
It is desirable, however; one often complained of thing is that it's not
easy enough to remove sendmail/perl from the system when freshly
installed.
-Dom
