I say it is a move in the right direction. I'm sure it's going to step on some bodies toes at some point, but if the community as a whole moves in this direction and can settle on CentOS as the base OS of choice it will only make us all stronger since we would all be on the same OS whether it's 32 or 64 bit.
Not to mention the time saved with coding for so many different OS's that you coders support right now. I propose we move in that direction and make CentOS the OS of choice as soon as possible. Just my 2 cents. Joel -----Original Message----- From: Eric Shubert [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, February 13, 2012 11:44 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [qmailtoaster] Future Distros - RHEL/CentOS ONLY I've done a good deal of thinking about this, and think that it'd be best to run it by the community at large (not just the developers) for everyone's consideration. This is not really new, and is not much different than what Jake had committed to some time ago. I just want to be sure that everyone is on board with this, and explain a few things. Due to various changes in the IT landscape over the past several years, I think it's best that future QMT development be limited to the RHEL/CentOS platform. There are several factors involved. First is that we'll be changing the method of distribution from source rpms to binary rpms, using yum to install packages (qtp-newmodel will be modified accordingly). We can do this because the qmail (et al) licensing was changed to public domain a couple years ago, so there is no restriction to distribute source-only any more. We also have mirrors in place that eliminate the need to have a single distribution point with high bandwidth capability. Using binary rpms for distribution not only simplifies installs and upgrades, but it also substantially reduces the disk space required, in addition to making QMT more secure due to the absence of a compiler and build tools. All in all, this is a win-win change. Secondly, the industry in general is moving toward virtual hosts, and QMT is making this move as well (many of us already run QMT as one or more VM guests). One of the advantages of virtualization is that multiple machines can coexist on the same host hardware, concurrently running entirely different operating systems and versions of languages and software. There's little need any more for QMT to coexist on the same machine with other applications or services. In fact, things are moving in a direction such that QMT itself will become divided into logical roles that will be able to implemented on separate hosts, allowing for more flexible and scalable QMT configurations. Stay tuned for that development, which is a ways off yet. So let's take a look briefly at the prominent distros that QMT will be discontinuing. Mandriva is on the ropes, struggling to survive. If you presently have a QMT running on Mandy, I would seriously consider a migration in the near future. SUSE does not use yum, it has yast instead. When I looked at yast some time ago it had no CLI, which was a big drawback to me. While I expect that yum could be installed and used, it goes against the "When in Rome" philosophy. The source rpms will of course continue to be available, so if someone cares to adapt them for SUSE, they may do so. While Fedora contains a great deal of what's in store for future RHEL/CentOS releases, it's not well suited as a QMT platform, simply because it changes too often (a new release twice a year), and most often none of the changes provide any benefit to QMT. If there happens to be something that would benefit QMT, it would most likely be available for RHEL/CentOS in the EPEL repo. So there is really no sense in packaging QMT for Fedora. I think this covers the distros worth mentioning. If I missed one, please let me know. In summary, going forward QMT will be available only on RHEL/CentOS platforms, for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. This will simplify spec files, documentation and installation/utility scripts substantially. For all other distros, the existing build options in the spec files will no longer be included. They will however be archived in a source code repository before being removed, so that they'll be available should anyone want to reference them at some point in the future. If you have a problem with or question about any of this, or you'd simply like to comment about something, please don't hesitate to reply. Thanks to everyone for their continued support and participation. -- -Eric 'shubes' ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Qmailtoaster is sponsored by Vickers Consulting Group (www.vickersconsulting.com) Vickers Consulting Group offers Qmailtoaster support and installations. If you need professional help with your setup, contact them today! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Please visit qmailtoaster.com for the latest news, updates, and packages. To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.1913 / Virus Database: 2112/4807 - Release Date: 02/13/12 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Qmailtoaster is sponsored by Vickers Consulting Group (www.vickersconsulting.com) Vickers Consulting Group offers Qmailtoaster support and installations. If you need professional help with your setup, contact them today! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please visit qmailtoaster.com for the latest news, updates, and packages. To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
