>> Explicitly decoupling sendmail updates from other things - and ripping >> the explicit dependencies out of core bits of ON - would be a wonderful >> step toward making a substitution of postfix in for sendmail easier. > > What dependencies?
Maybe it isn't as big a problem anymore. It used to be a Big One. [I have some postfix packages here, built but never tested thoroughly enough. This issue was why not...] > There is a reasonable question to ask, though. In cases like this where > there are multiple ways of providing the same functionality do we want > some form of alternates mechanism, or simply mark the alternates > incompatible with each other so you can only ever have one of the > alternates installed. I would love to have /usr/bin/sendmail.postfix, /usr/bin/sendmail.sendmail, /usr/bin/sendmail.exim, and whatever else. Debian's /etc/alternatives system is a darn excellent model for doing this efficiently and well. >> The current situation in Solaris is that a machine being used as a >> postfix server is very difficult to patch. ;) [You can do it, but you >> really have got to do some other prep work first... like making sure >> that SUNWsm* package files are all in the proper pre-postfix >> locations... which is why nobody at my site does it.] > > Huh? Just pkgrm the sendmail packages (snagging a copy of /bin/vacation > if you need it), install postfix, and patch away as normal. Works for > me. Maybe I should take another stab at it, sometime... perhaps the previous problems will have evaporated :-) --elijah
