Mate Wierdl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think you misunderstood the proposal: only the default compilation would
> be changed with setting the appropriate option to configure. If you have a
> broken setup (or no MTA, in your case), then you can always recompile nmh to
> suit your needs.
Well...maybe partially...the defaults in the FreeBSD ports collection
get used for 2 purposes (at least):
1) That's what you get when you type 'make' in the ports directory. I
was thinking that if I change the default in the port, there should
be a make variable that could be set to change the MTS to something
different. So, if you do
make
you get the default (whatever is decided for that) and if you type
make MTS=smtp
you get '--with-mts=smtp' in the resulting build.
2) To create the pre-built 'package' that is distributed on the CD and
can be installed with a 'pkg_add' command.
So, regardless of the default, it's always possible to get other
behaviors (NOTE: I haven't added that 'MTS' make variable to the
port's Makefile, yet).
> Of course, there could be an argument about which default serves more
> people. I have no insight: are there more boxes setup with nmh but without
> MTA?
That's the main question here...need to decide what the tradeoffs are
and what's most likely for end users/administrators of the software.
I'm thinking that it's better to aim the default values more towards
the more novice types under the theory that the more experienced
installer would have a better chance of knowing what the choices mean?
> I tend to think that there are more than one MUAs on each box, and instead
> of configuring each separately to use an smtp server, it may be just easier
> to set up an MTA on the box.
Ehhh...depends...it seems that standard single user type workstations
would be more likely to have an easy way to throw a message at
someone's SMTP port (e.g. their ISP or corporate server). And that it'd
be easier to administer a group of systems if the admin staff didn't
have to worry about the configuration of sendmail/smail/qmail/exim/whatever
on every single system. I know that at a former employer, we had a
diverse collection of systems (ranging from DEC Ultrix 4.1 [I think]
to SunOS 3.x to SunOS 5.x to HPUX 8/9/10, etc)...at any rate, we
didn't feel like building & configuring an MTA for every single
system although I think we generally tried to setup a minimal
sendmail.cf for each box, but didn't necessarily run daemons on each
box.
At any rate...it seems to come down to...how likely is it that a mail
user won't have the ability to submit messages to an SMTP port
somewhere? And, even if they DO have the ability, are there
capabilities that are likely lost by doing that?
Maybe what I should do in the FreeBSD ports is continue to accept the
nmh default for the MTS, but add an easy make variable option to
override it?
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
