Re: [exim] Debian as a 'Special Case' for Exim

Hi,

Sorry, I did not tend to take this discussion off-list.

Am Freitag, 18. Februar 2005 16:06 schrieb Walt Reed:
> On Fri, Feb 18, 2005 at 03:22:10PM +0100, Hendrik Sattler said:
> > Am Freitag, 18. Februar 2005 15:05 schrieb Walt Reed:
> > > Debian Stable's default MTA is exim 3 which is
> > > really the main problem, derived from the excruciatingly long release
> > > cycle.
> >
> > Why exactly is this a problem? Exim3 works like it does when it was
> > current. You can also still download it from the exim FTP servers. And if
> > you simple do not NEED the new things in exim4, I do not see any
> > motivation to upgrade. This is completely independent of running Debian
> > or any other distribution.
> >
> > If you are complaining that some use older exim versions, get over it,
> > you cannot change that. This really sounds like you being ashamed of an
> > older version just because you have a new an fancy one.
>
> I think you are missing the main issue with Exim 3.

And I think you are missing the main issue with exim4:
- you will forever and always have older distribution with older software
- there is no fully-automatic upgrade path from exim3 to exim4 (at least
nothing that produces maintainable results). That's not really a problem as
the major version changed but the problem is that everyone is expected to
happily change to exim4 and configure that one anew.
- you can still download exim3 from the exim.org mirrors and lots of other ftp
server that have older distributions as archive

Debian Sarge WILL NOT ship exim3 as default anymore but still has an exim3
(actually called 'exim') package. Why? Because someone might want to UPGRADE
without having to cope with a suddenly non-working system. Absolutely noone
prevents you from changing to exim4 AFTER the upgrade or stay with exim3 if
you are happy. I do not see any problem with this policy but i DO see
problems with taking exim3 out of Debian Sarge when it was the default MTA in
Debian Woody. There are people and distribution that do not care about this,
Debian does.
So see Debian Sarge as having the same state as exim.org's ftp servers.

> It's no longer supported upstream. Outside of Debian, very few sites use
> it anymore.

And how many had a nice and easy upgrade? I guess, those sites "simply"
reworked their configuration.

> The problem is all the debian users that come in looking
> for help and most of the people on exim-users can't help them since they
> have all moved to exim4 years ago.

Aaaah, now you see the real problem: it's not exim3 in Debian but missing
support for old versions in exim-users. That's something different but
Debian's not to blame for that.

> All the current FAQ's docs, wiki's,
> howto's are ALL exim 4. The last exim 3 release was almost 3 years ago.
> Over and over and over, the answers are always "Exim 3 is dead. Upgrade
> to exim 4."

Yes, that's valid and e.g. cdrtools maintainer does it the same. However,the
mailing list admin could make that clear in the welcome mail or in the text
on its webpage. Nothing about exim3 or older being not welcome here is
mentioned there.
But even if you do, you face the same problem that the Debian exim4 packages
have: people do not like to read documentation, obviously (including those
that complain about the exim4-config debian package).

HS