[Exim] Debian Package

Speaking as a debian user, and an admin of quite a few debian systems,
I would not like to see mysql drivers compiled in to the standard
package. However I'm not so sure dynamically loaded libraries are the
way to go either. Would the extra code, complexity, and possible new
security problems be worth it? I suspect not.

Is it possible to have different exim packages, eg exim-tiny, exim and
exim-db, or is this discouraged by policy?

exim-tiny could have a very minimal set of directors, routers and
lookup types compiled in, and exim-db would have all possible drivers
in and the regular package could stay as it is.

Most of the systems I administer don't use any lookups at all except
for an lsearch for the aliases file. I would use a deb with only
lsearch compiled in if it were available, and I suspect this would do
for 90% of debian users too.

> I however want on-demand loading of modules from shared libraries for a
> different reason.
>
> As the maintainer of the debian package of exim I get a lot of mails asking
> me to compile in the mysql and/or pgsql lookup drivers (normally mysql - I
> don't know why it's more popular than pgsql but it does seem to be). I would
> like to; debian policy says that I should compile in all optional features
> unless there is an over-riding reason not to.
>
> In this case there is what I consider to be an over-riding reason not to:
> exim is a priority "important" package[1] and including those lookup drivers
> woudl bring two big databases, or at very least their client libraries, into
> important, which I don't want to do.
>
>
> [1] Definition is summarised as "The important packages are just a bare
> minimum of commonly-expected and necessary tools."
>