mail gui

[Z]

Paul Iadonisi wrote:

>On Sun, 2004-10-31 at 10:50, Z wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>  
>
>>Now for the stupid question of the day: Why wasn't the config files 
>>changed to something decent?
>>Why is it still using cryptic m4 macros to create even more cryptic configs?
>>    
>>
>
>  Um, actually, what makes you say that the m4 macros are cryptic?  Now,
>  
>
Well, stuff like "define(`confAUTH_OPTIONS', `A p y')dnl" is not exactly 
self-describing...

>m4 itself is *extremely* difficult to read and debug if you are writing
>your own FEATURES, HACKS, or proto.m4 changes, but that's another
>matter.  The whole purpose of using m4, however, is to make life
>easier...and it certainly does, as features now have meaningful names,
>instead of stuff like R*&$&^!(
>  And if you *can* do everything with m4 macros (you can't, but almost
>can), then who really cares what the .cf file looks like?  It's no
>different than compiling a source program getting a binary result.  Yes,
>many would argue that the output looks the same (heh), but if you stick
>modifying the m4 file, it shouldn't really matter.
>  
>
The problem is that I don't believe tha every possible combination of 
macros has been validated.
If things don't work as you expect, you'll have to see if the generated 
.cf indeed looks like what
you tried to accomplish. At that point, you're screwed.

>  That said, I believe one of the significant changes in SendmailX is
>the new config file format.  From what I've seen, it looks *much* more
>readable.  I don't know about actual rewriting rulesets, however.  I
>think the changes are aimed more at the everything but the rulesets (map
>definitions, options, milter definitions, etc.).  Given what the
>rulesets actually do, it's hard to imagine a better way to do it and
>still maintain the current flexibility.  But I could be wrong...that may
>be changed, too.  I have a copy of smX-0.0.16, so I'll take a look.
>
>[snip]
>
>  
>
>>Anyone tried commercial sendmail? Is it different?
>>    
>>
>
>  A few years ago, yes, I did.  But the codebase is the same, with a few
>features added strictly for administration, plus the web gui.  Nothing
>to write home about, IMHO.
>  
>
Thanks for the info. Spared me some work.

Z