Jason Haar wrote: > Theo Van Dinter wrote: > >> All pre files are used. Nothing is automatically loaded. There are >> multiple files, based on the release where the plugins that are loaded by >> that file were in. This way, we can add new plugins and the new pre file >> will get installed, and there's no issue with changing the old pre files >> (where admins may have added their own config, commented things out, etc.) >> >> So no, don't remove "old" pre files, because they're still being used and >> important. >> >> > I'd just like to agree with Dan this this isn't intuitive.
I'll agree this isn't always clear if you're just going on the filenames alone. I've seen a lot of folks, even package maintainers, make this mistake. As others have suggested, this is documented in the UPGRADE file. -------- - There are now multiple files read to enable plugins in the /etc/mail/spamassassin directory; previously only one, "init.pre" was read. Now both "init.pre", "v310.pre", and any other files ending in ".pre" will be read. As future releases are made, new plugins will be added to new files named according to the release they're added in. -------- Perhaps that text should be added as a comment to each .pre file to avoid future confusion. I would also like to point out that if it was intended that you should delete the old files when upgrading, they'd not be in /etc/mail/spamassassin in the first place. Instead they would be in /usr/share/spamassassin, which gets blown away and replaced during upgrades. (And the primary reason why folks like me warn folks against editing those files is they get obliterated during upgrades, forcing you to re-customize after each upgrade. But if the intent was to delete and replace, it would be in this directory...) Again, thats a point that wouldn't be obvious to a novice, but hopefully knowing that concept is useful to you at some point. The whole reason it is done that way is so that when you upgrade, you don't have to re-configure all your plugin preferences from scratch.. All your choices about the older plugins get preserved.
