On Sat, 31 Jul 1999, Mark Brown wrote: > On Fri, Jul 30, 1999 at 08:25:25PM -0600, John Galt wrote: > > > This would be more of an arguement for a MTA being a priority:required > > rather than a Depends: on an Extra package. The other question that this > > There are a selection of MTAs. No given one of them is required, it's > just that you ought to have one installed.
Yeah, you ought to have one installed, so why add a redundant dependency to a MUA? Because a you OUGHT to have a MTA with your MUA as well--not need, ought: I'm beating a dead horse, but we've only discovered one MUA that is completely useless without a MTA, mutt (and as far as I'm concerned, it's just about as useless WITH a MTA) > > > begs is: Do these other packages that call sendmail depend on a MTA? Not > > RECOMMEND, but DEPEND--if not, why the disparity? BTW you're right that a > > Policy requires that packages do not depend on any package of lower > priority, and in any case a recommendation is almost as strong as a > dependancy in dselect (of course, many people use apt these days). Policy also requires that a package be made universally useless without another package before it can be said to depend on it, and I've said it more times than I care to count: A MUA CAN WORK IN AT LEAST ONE CASE WITHOUT A LOCAL MTA--that of being used as a POP/IMAP client for a remote SMTP server, and that's all that's necessary to go from Depends: to Recommends: PERIOD. > > MTA is essential, but I'm doubting that it can be said to be a dependency > > of a MUA, more like a recommends: > > For MUAs which send mail by calling sendmail, it is pretty much a > dependancy. What if I'm using smail, qmail, or postfix--those are all valid MTAs for the dependency--but they won't get called when a fork goes out to sendmail (except smail, I believe it aliases sendmail to itself in installation), or are you going far afield and postulating a MUA that strictly depends on sendmail? If you're doing that, credibility is so strained at that point that we could use /bin/false to send mail--there's so many competing MTAs that your hypothetical MUA would be defined as broken at the plate. > -- > Mark Brown mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Trying to avoid grumpiness) > http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/ > EUFS http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/ > When you are having a bad day, and it seems like everybody is trying to tick you off, remember that it takes 42 muscles to produce a frown, but only 4 muscles to work the trigger of a good sniper rifle. Who is John galt? [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who!
