[Calendarserver-discuss] Free Software calendaring and groupware (in and beyond Debian)

[Paul Boddie]

On Friday 8. April 2016 22.02.03 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> 
> I read the documentation on he train ride from Denmark to Linux Hotel -
> really nice and detailed read!

As long as you didn't fall asleep and wake up in the sidings somewhere. ;-)

> > (On the topic of package configuration, I did try and make the Kolab
> > packaging work with debconf, which isn't something I would really like
> > to do again in the near future, but maybe debconf interaction isn't
> > really necessary for something as simple as this work.)
> 
> Right, I may introduce debconf later (if nothing else then for the SQL
> stuff when you release that, by use of dbconfig-common), but expect it
> to *not* be necessary for an initial working package release.

The basic installation (tools/install.sh) involves only the program files plus 
filesystem resources, which is a common Debian phenomenon in my experience. It 
does put things in /etc/imip-agent, which might not be done in the best way 
because something should be checking for changes (maybe a debhelper thing).

How the software plugs into the mail configuration does involve decisions, but 
even then it should be possible to install some files somewhere and have the 
mail system reference them if configured to do so, deferring that 
configuration to a later time. Again, I've seen various Debian packages do 
that. Nothing actually gets installed into the configuration of other 
software: that's an administrator decision.

There would be parameterisation required to make some of the mail 
configuration files, and that might well involve interaction with the 
administrator. I don't have a problem making simple command line tools to help 
with this as they could always be invoked by debconf. I've tried to make 
standalone tools (in the tools directory) for common tasks.

Although there is a degree of integration required for the software to be 
useful, at least we're not aiming to configure everything related to it as 
well. (That was the challenge with the Kolab packaging and trying to replace 
the notorious setup-kolab script.)

Paul