On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 10:33:56PM +0200, Michael Haardt wrote:
[...]
>> Wearing my Debian maintainer head, I have to add that it would make my
>> life absolutely miserable, the "easiest" option for me would be to
>> remove your modifiation for the Debian package.
> Honestly, I don't care what Debian does. I enjoy free software,
> because I am free to use and develop it. So far, nobody expressed
> feeling miserable about me hacking the source and distributing patches,
> but there is always a first time.
> There is probably a reason why exiscan is still a patch instead of an
> integral part of Exim.
I don't know the insides, but from my POV it looks like exiscan is
semiofficial and blessed by Phil, and the reason it is a patch is to
separate responsibilties. They simply use tar.gz+patch instead of a
common CVS.
> I take patches as what they are, experimental
> modifications, development steps.
I do think that basic assumption is not generally correct. exiscan is
not "experimental". Otherwise it just would not be included in almost
any binary distribution of exim you'll find on the web (BSD port-tree,
rpm, Debian, Gentoo ...).
When I chose to include the patch in the Debian package, I did it
not do it without afterthought: It is very popular, upstream is
active, upstream closely follows exim's development (no outdated fork)
and because it seemed to be stable (since -acl), i.e. it did not break
compatibilty every other weak.
Or if you want different example check qmail. Many of its patches are
rather essential than experimental.
> And development is what takes place here. Exiscan is unable to use
> multiple SA servers, because you can not specify the server as part
> of the ACL. My patch changes that, because I need it, and you are
> welcome to contribute to the development process in a constructive
> way.
I tried to be constructive. I just don't know what your intentions
are, if you'd rather maintain a permanent fork of exiscan yxour
approach is the correct one, OTOH if you intend to get your code
merged you'll have to listen and change it to stop breaking
compatibilty, because exiscan has a rather big installation base and
is no experimantal feature that may change its configuration syntax
every other week.
[...]
>> [1] Still missing a reply on
>> <20031011153331.GA10829@???>.
> I did not intentionally miss to answer it. Please mail it again, on
> the list or private.
I think it not necessary anymore, you have answered it impliceitely
(rather broken than ugly).
cu andreas
