[gentoo-dev] comments on qmail 1.03-r12 ebuild

[Hallgrimur H. Gunnarsson]

Hello all!

I just filed my first bugs and I wanted to get
the opinion of my fellow users. Since some of
my comments involve more things than qmail I
thought I'd follow it up by also posting it
here in my first e-mail to this list.

So, greetings to you all from sunny Iceland ! :-)

Here are my comments for the latest qmail test ebuild
(1.03-r12), most of it applies to earlier versions as well.

- [#28256] On creating a maildir and .qmail in ~root

        [CUT]

        # make sure root can get some mail
        [ ! -d /root/.maildir ] && ${MAILDIRMAKE} /root/.maildir
        [ ! -e /root/.qmail ] && cp ${FILESDIR}/${PV}-${PR}/dot_qmail
/root/.qmail
        [ -e /root/.qmail ] && chmod 644 /root/.qmail

        [/CUT]

        Earlier in the ebuild an alias is set up for root,
        so this is unnecessary. Besides, even if there wouldn't
        be an alias, the mail would bounce since mail is
        never delivered to the root user in qmail.

- [#28257] On copying dot-qmail to /etc/skel/.qmail

        This is redundant. The same file (files/dot-qmail)
        is used for defaultdelivery, which is how it should
        be done.

- [#28258] On using dot-forward in defaultdelivery

        I think dot-forward should not be default in
        the defaultdelivery. It's okay to have the package
        installed, so users can add it themselves if they
        need it, but most users dont need dot-forward,
        so it's an extra invocation per message in the
        delivery pipeline.

- [#28260] On using .maildir instead of Maildir

        I know this has been brought up before (bug #27154)
        and Robin Johnson said he strongly believed that
        .maildir was better than Maildir because:

        [QUOTE from #27154]

        because i've seen lots of [l]users select everything
        visible in their home directory, and delete. 'rm -rf *'
        and it's gone. at least with .maildir, it is protected.

        Furthermore, nothing in any of the maildir standards
        specificied the actual name of the directory.

        [/QUOTE]

        I dont think this is such a good reason. Yes,
        there's nothing in the maildir standards
        about the name, but that doesn't mean you have
        to find a new one. Alot of programs assume
        the name to be Maildir, and AFAIK gentoo is the
        only distribution that uses .maildir, so
        for one it's a compatability issue. Furthermore,
        I think it's up to the system administrator whether
        he wants to dumb down the system, I for one
        would prefer to have Maildir as the default.

- [#28259] Honor mbox/maildir USE flags

        qmail doesn't honor the mbox/maildir USE flags.
        The postfix ebuild does this, so I think it'd be
        the right thing to do in qmail too.

        The mbox/maildir flags aren't mutually exclusive,
        and since most programs support to have both simultaneously
        the question becomes which one takes precedence
        if both are enabled. In the original qmail package
        Mailbox delivery is the default.

        In addition, which one (mbox/maildir) is used if
        neither is specified (?), shouldn't one of them
        be in make.defaults, or should it be up to
        the package to decide?

        I can think of one reason why qmail doesnt honor
        the USE flags. Mbox seems to imply delivery to
        /var/mail/$USER in gentoo, which is not possible
        to do in defaultdelivery. I think delivery to
        ~/Mailbox is the right thing to do. Most programs
        support it and/or use MAIL to find the mailbox.
        Administrators can also create symbolic links
        in /var/mail for compatability if they really need
        it.

That's all for now! Thanks for reading and I welcome all comments!

-- hhg

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