Bug#392831: exim4-config: colons or semi colons as separators (debconf templates issue)

[Marc Haber]

On Sat, Oct 14, 2006 at 11:57:17AM +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:
> On 2006-10-14 Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages at zugschlus.de> wrote:
> > On Sat, Oct 14, 2006 at 11:05:09AM +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:
> >> On 2006-10-14 Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages at zugschlus.de> wrote:
> >>> I am currently inclined to remove the possibility of using constructs
> >>> that complex via debconf, documenting that only plain lists, semicolon
> >>> separated, are allowed and that people wanting to do more complex
> >>> things via Exim macros.
> [...] 
> >> I would prefer if things continued to work. afaict this has worked
> >> since 2002 and I currently fail to see a compelling reason to remove
> >> it.
> 
> > Consistency.
> 
> > To spare people from doubling the colons in IP address lists, exim now
> > allows selection of other separator characters. The semicolon as
> > separator for IP address lists was introduced a few months ago. I
> > think it is a good idea to be consistent here and to have all lists
> > semicolon separated now.
> 
> I just disagree that this is important enough to break working setups.
> In hindsight ";" was a bad choice as new default. :-(

What would you have chosen?

> > The change would screw advanced uses who would know to look in
> > NEWS.Debian and find the explanation.
> 
> > I'd prefer screwing advanced users over confusing newbies. The former
> > can cope, the latter will produce hard-to-debug issues.
> 
> I used to be able to simply extend the Debian setup, now I would
> suddenly have to actively work around it by using some dummy value in
> update-exim4.conf.conf and setting a MAIN_LOCAL_DOMAINS manually.

I suspect that you're the only one around who knows exim4-config good
enough to come up with an idea as mad as this.

Greetings
Marc

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