qmail port successfull

Lapo Luchini lapo@lapo.it
Thu May 29 10:41:00 GMT 2003


Christopher Faylor wrote:

>>To cgf:
>>Yes, I must forget about sharing Win32 binaries.
>>    
>>
>That's a really regrettable outcome of the qmail license.  Oh well.
>
>cgf
>
As far as i remember some linux distro do have qmail in binary form... 
they asked DJB and (as far as I remember) he added to the license the 
"exception".
Woulnd't this be acceptable on "our platform" too?

> Exception: You are permitted to distribute a precompiled var-qmail 
> package <http://cr.yp.to/qmail/var-qmail.html> if (1) installing the 
> package produces /exactly/ the same /var/qmail hierarchy as a user 
> would obtain by downloading, compiling, and installing 
> qmail-1.03.tar.gz, fastforward-0.51.tar.gz, and 
> dot-forward-0.71.tar.gz; (2) the package behaves correctly, i.e., the 
> same way as normal qmail+fastforward+dot-forward installations on all 
> other systems; and (3) the package's creator warrants that he has made 
> a good-faith attempt to ensure that the package behaves correctly. It 
> is not acceptable <http://cr.yp.to/compatibility.html> to have qmail 
> working differently on different machines; any variation is a bug. If 
> there's something about a system (compiler, libraries, kernel, 
> hardware, whatever) that changes qmail's behavior, then that platform 
> is /not/ supported, and you are /not/ permitted to distribute binaries.

This would require of course to have a binary with no vpopmail support... =(

P.S.: maybe it's just that I'm using FreeBSD more and more, but its 
"ports system" seems to me better each time I think of it (it is a 
collection of some 8000 Makefiles that contains instruction to download 
source form original website, apply patch if necessary, compile and 
install as a system package).
It is true, of course, that most of the people out there wouln't like to 
compile things, but when it's an automatic non-interactive script, it 
can be a little better maybe.
This reminds me that maybe it could be cool to have an "install" option 
in "type 2 packages" that installs them directly, without bothering to 
have a "fake" local setup.ini, starting setup, let it install the 
package... this would need some command line "installed package db" 
management of some kind. Or it is already out there, only I didn't 
notice it?

-- 
Lapo 'Raist' Luchini
lapo@lapo.it (PGP & X.509 keys available)
http://www.lapo.it (ICQ UIN: 529796)



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