Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 17:07:27 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: brantk@atlas.com Cc: jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com, jkh@time.cdrom.com, peter@taronga.com, bmk@fta.com, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Replacing sendmail Message-ID: <199611262307.RAA17794@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <199611262245.OAA16837@itchy.atlas.com> from "Brant Katkansky" at Nov 26, 96 02:45:47 pm
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> > CONFIGURATION of packages is a problem as well. I am not sure that it > > is wise to try to solve both problems with the same tool, but am certainly > > willing to discuss it if you believe that it is (I will tell you now: I have > > a preconceived notion that it is not a good idea). > > > > I'm of the same mind as Joe on this, but I don't see it as a problem > to wedge it in elegantly in the future: > > pkg_control -config subsystem [opts] > > where opts are arguments that are passed to subsystem's config script/program. Hi Brant, I was _thinking_ about that very possibility but did not want to confuse the issue for the time being. :-) As I wrote to Jordan, I do believe that the true "bigger picture" is the MANAGEMENT issue, being able to intelligently deal with a particular program through an interface that is preferably common to both FreeBSD-ports and FreeBSD-base-stuff. However, if that were already a given, I was thinking along the same lines that I think Brant was, and I would extend it as follows: Since we already have a pkg_control management function that is extensible (at least the shell script pseudocode I posted would be), why not add a "-config" capability? It would be great to write a "mail_control" interface on top of that. Let's see how it works, at least in my head... "mail_control -bounce_warnings no" mail_control finds out what MTA is active (another potential problem to solve, probably not too hard). Then it dispatches the request to the pkg_control mechanism: pkg_control -config sendmail bounce_warnings=no --> "Ok" pkg_control -config nmail bounce_warnings=no --> "Nmail does not support the setting of bounce_warnings" (Nmail being a hypothetical MTA). Maybe mail_control even keeps around a list of the specified preferences, so that when you do a "mail_control -bounce_warnings no" and then later a "mail_control -switchto nmail" under the sheets it does a "pkg_control -disable sendmail" "pkg_control -enable nmail" "pkg_control -config nmail bounce_warnings=no" to transparently initialize the new mailer with the same settings that the old mailer had. THAT may allow a truly portable and generalized "mail_control" mechanism to be written without extensive knowledge of the underlying details! Yes! Go Team! :-) :-) ... JG
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