Eli Sand wrote:
> I went to install
> SpamAssassin and noticed just how many package dependencies it has (mostly
> in Perl - but then some of those have deps as well, etc...). It's a rather
> disgusting list tbh - especially since I like my servers to be clean and
> simple.
>
I understand where you are coming from, I try to follow a similar
philosophy when setting up servers but at the same time, I don't let it
interfere with functionality.
A fresh install of slackware with only the kernel, sh and basic command
line utils is clean and simple, but it can't actually do much. I can't
see the point of dropping useful programs because they happen to be
highly modular and make use of existing code.
Think about it this way, if <some mega spam filter> does everything
spamassassin does but without the dependencies then it means that rather
than reusing existing code which can be shared with other apps, they
have reinvented the wheel and built all of the code into their app (OK,
if it is a compiled app it might use system libraries rather than perl
modules). Anyway, my point is, breaking things down into modules isn't a
bad thing and can be cleaner than otherwise, don't want to do DNSBL?
then you don't need to install the DNS lookup code.
If you install the packages through CPAN then as far as the rest of the
system is concerned they are just part of Perl, it can be set to only
download essential dependencies and it is relatively painless and tidy.
At the end of the day clean and simple is something you want *in
addition* to being fully functional, dropping functionality to improve
"cleanliness" is backwards.
*Michael Heydon - IT Administrator *
michaelh@??? <
mailto:michaelh@jaswin.com.au>
