[OT] Debian Policy (was Re: [Mimedefang] Re: Quarantine location)

[Michael Sims]

David F. Skoll wrote:
> Kris Deugau wrote:
>
>> Maybe, maybe not.  Debian package maintainers seem to delight in
>> "Doing Things Differently" for a lot of packages, but maybe that's
>> just my background learning all of the RedHat-isms first.  <g>
>
> Tell me about it!  Two of the pieces of software we rely on are
> Sendmail and PostgreSQL.  The Debian packages for both of those
> products are... interesting, shall we say.  Convoluted, complicated,
> with insane startup scripts, configuration options,... ouch!  My head
> hurts!

Yes, that's been my experience as well.  Especially the sendmail package.  I took
the time to learn sendmail's m4 config mechanism, and in some cases I can even pick
apart a .cf file, but Debian expects me to learn yet another config file format for
its sendmail package?  I can appreciate the maintainer trying to make things simpler
for some, but still...

I have a little homegrown configuration mechanism I use for versioning and
deployment.  Basically anytime a new sendmail package is available, I apt-get
upgrade, then I use my configuration mechanism to overwrite whatever it does with
the config files with my versioned config.  So on my servers at least,
/etc/mail/sendmail.conf is completely ignored. :)  One less thing to learn...

> We still use and like Debian around here, but we grumble. :-)

Ditto.  The oddness with a couple of packages here and there is a small price to pay
for the relative sanity of the rest of the distro, when compared with alternatives
(IMHO)...