RFC: Sendmail deprecation ?

[freebsd.arch at clogic.com.ua]

On 2017-12-11 02:55, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
> On 12/10/17 12:08, K. Macy wrote:
>> On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 6:27 AM,  <freebsd.arch at clogic.com.ua> wrote:
>>> On 2017-12-10 15:31, Jamie Landeg-Jones wrote:
>>>> freebsd.arch at clogic.com.ua wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Most users don't need a sandmail in base. As example, I always 
>>>>> disable
>>>>> sendmail and install dma for local use or postfix for mail servers. 
>>>>> So I
>>>>> can't understand, why I need do this every time as I install new
>>>>> instance of FreeBSD in 2017?
>>>> 
>>>> There are many valid arguments for and against removal, but I'm 
>>>> afraid
>>>> that isn't one of them.
>> That's not really the question. The question is "why won't 'pkg
>> install sendmail' work for users that need it?" There are two
>> technical reasons for why a component is in base and two emotional /
>> political.
>> 
>> The two technical reasons are:
>> 1) The system won't work without it (e.g. rc files, kill, rm, etc)
> 
> As a sub-point, we do want the base system to be a reliable and
> consistent set of things such that scripts and instructions can
> reference them; one of FreeBSD's strong points is that I can write a
> script targeting "FreeBSD" and know that a reasonably complete system
> is going to be present and that I won't find out that, say, ping or
> telnet are not installed. This expands the set of important tools much
> beyond "kill" and "rm" and means we should tread very, very carefully
> in terms of moving things out of the base system -- this is one of my
> major general reservations about the proposed implemention of pkgbase.
> 
> That said, sendmail is *definitely* not in that category so long as
> some basic MTA is there that makes reports from periodic etc. work.
> The important thing is that mail(1) work, not that it be sendmail. So
> I'm 100% in favor of dropping sendmail.
> -Nathan

I think the situation is similar to the one that was when bind replaced 
with unbound/ldns. A fully featured authoritative DNS server was removed 
from the base system and replaced with small and secure DNS resolver.

>> 2) The component is tightly coupled to the kernel (e.g. bhyve)
>> 
>> There are of course plenty of things which fall in to both buckets:
>> libc, ifconfig, etc.
>> 
>> The two emotional reasons are:
>> 1) Emotional attachment (e.g. fortune)
>> 2) Inertia (rcs, sendmail, etc)
>> Thanks to bapt and friends pkg "just works" for most people for most
>> cases. In conclusion, further discussion needs to either a) make a
>> compelling case for why either my technical points are insufficient or
>> the emotional drivers are critical; or b) explain why "pkg install
>> sendmail" won't work.
>> 
>> Cheers.
>> -M