[Mimedefang] Modular filter (was Re: New errors following update to 2.85)

[Dianne Skoll]

On Thu, 11 Nov 2021 20:35:47 -0700
Philip Prindeville via MIMEDefang <mimedefang at lists.mimedefang.org>
wrote:

> Okay, thanks.  I had suggested to Dianne some time ago that we
> include extra functionality (like DKIM checking, etc.) but leave the
> invocation commented out, and she was opposed to that because it
> cluttered the code.

> I don't see it that way, and the time to parse code that doesn't get
> executed seems to be negligible in Perl, especially if the same
> instance gets run 300 times before being terminated...

It's not only parsing time, it's also memory, mutliplied by the number of
scanning processes because Perl is not very effective at sharing memory
after a fork due to its reference-counted garbage collection.

The thing is, MIMEDefang's Perl code (in my opinion) is terrible
already and adding more built-in functions without modularizing it
would make it even more terrible.  That's why I made Mailmunge, which
has a much cleaner API (no global variables!), uses much less memory
than MIMEDefang in many cases, and lets you include exactly what you
need (and only what you need.)

        https://www.mailmunge.org/

Regards,

Dianne.