Bug#295391: exim4 configuration generator is on drugs

[Andreas Metzler]

On 2005-02-17 Ian Jackson <iwj@ncipher.com> wrote:
> Marc Haber writes ("Re: Bug#295391: exim4 configuration generator is on drugs"):
[...]
> > Well, Tony is not known for his high opinion about the Debian exim 4
> > packages. I have, however, not received a single word of constructive
> > criticism from him ever, and I doubt that he ever took a closer look
> > at Debian policy or at the Debian exim4 packages.

> Are you going to claim that I'm ignorant of Debian policy or of mail
> configuration?

Hello,
I do not and Marc did not either, afaict. But more to the point: Are
you familiar with packages using (difficult to parse) debconf managed
configuration files?

exim is basically in the same boat as XFree86, there is no perfect
solution.

> I _am_ currently largely ignorant of the Debian exim4
> packages, but what I've seen does not impress me.
[...]
> I would be happy to update the old smailconfig script to make it
> generate exim configs (and use debconf for its questions) if I thought
> that my patch to throw away the template system would be accepted.

The hard part is not "generate exim configs (and use debconf for
its questions)" but to how to:

* preserve user changes made with an editor
* make reconfiguring work.
* feed back changes in the configuration shipped in the package. A
  fire-and-forget scheme like eximconfig fails miserably on that, with
  the result that Mark Baker received identical bug-reports _years_
  after he had fixed the bug in eximconfig.

               cu andreas
-- 
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