Why is sendmail is part of the system and not a package?

Ruben de Groot mail25 at bzerk.org
Thu Oct 29 18:27:47 UTC 2009


On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 06:55:20PM +0100, Erik Norgaard typed:
> Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> >
> I don't argue for a replacement but for the elimination. Install a port 
> if you need an MTA, you're happy with that way for so many other 
> standard services.

Isn't this going a little too far? What other posix systems ship whith no
default MTA at all? Not many I would say.

> The default should be to dump cron output to a file. No need to setup 4 
> mail clients. Only if you want to send the output to a remote address 
> would you need to do this.

No need to setup mail clients? How about you having to create an 
infrastructure to parse all these files on your servers? I like the way it
is: create an alias for root and be done with it.

> The option remains to install from ports as with so many other things.

And many other things not. Or do you want to go the linux way: just a kernel
and the rest in packages? I like a complete OS.

> My concern is if some heavy legacy application, because of history or 
> tradition, remains in base will draw resources from advancing in other 
> areas that are much more relevant today.

sendmail is NOT a legacy application. It's actively being developed 
ON FreeBSD. Actually, the maintainer(s) are doing a great job and are
definetely NOT drawing resources from anyone or anything else. These
discussions are. 
Also the sources in /usr/src/contrib/sendmail/src are 2.2 MB. That's
not heavy at all.

Ruben


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