Default MTA for Fedora 7
Thomas M Steenholdt
tmus at tmus.dk
Mon Feb 5 20:39:42 UTC 2007
Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Monday 05 February 2007 12:52, Ralf Ertzinger wrote:
>>> Are we really changing the default MTA just because of a cock-up in
>>> resolving dependencies?
>> No.
>> We change it because sendmail sucks and needs to die.
>
> No, we haven't _changed_ anything. We let yum decide what dep to satisfy
> smtpdaemon dependencies of mdadm and fetchmail, which happened to be in the
> Desktop spin that we did for Test 1. We have not made any statement or
> decision about what might be the "default" MTA should a user actually ask for
> an MTA. In fact, in the Desktop installer, there is NO CHOICE for an MTA on
> purpose.
>
> Discussions like what are happening here is exactly why I don't want to choose
> a default one. I'd much rather the Mail Server grouped marked every MTA
> as 'optional' and the end user has to make a choice. If no choice is made,
> than the dependency resolver will make a choice, and right now, exim wins
> because it wins in a sort of all that provide smtpdaemon (shortest name). If
> somebody packages up the 'aa' package that provides smtpdaemon and plays with
> alternatives right, 'aa' would win, again because of the sort.
>
> I'm tired of this argument, let no mailer be default, other than what wins
> progamatically by dep resolution.
>
>
I'm not going to debate which mailer is best, but I have to say this...
Knowing that exim will win a dependency race for for /usr/sbin/sendmail,
including the package on the media and installing it by default (even if
it's to satisfy a dep.), comes very very close to being a conscious
decision.
/Thomas
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