Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 19 Dec 2017 19:03:00 +0100
From:      Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de>
To:        Ted Hatfield <ted@io-tx.com>, freebsd-ports@freebsd.org, Eugene Grosbein <eugen@grosbein.net>
Cc:        Sunpoet Po-Chuan Hsieh <sunpoet@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: Procmail got updated!
Message-ID:  <f68594db-396b-0821-e90d-3f089781e8fd@gmx.de>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.20.1712181824220.10261@io-tx.com>
References:  <alpine.BSF.2.21.1712181012470.92288@aneurin.horsfall.org> <a3a1097d-22c7-89cc-dd69-b4ceeebf7228@gmx.de> <alpine.BSF.2.20.1712181824220.10261@io-tx.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Am 19.12.2017 um 01:30 schrieb Ted Hatfield:
>
>
> On Mon, 18 Dec 2017, Matthias Andree wrote:
>
>> Am 18.12.2017 um 00:17 schrieb Dave Horsfall:
>>> Doing my regular update, and...
>>>
>>> =C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 Upgrading procmail from 3.22_9 to 3.22_10...
>>>
>>> Good grief; who's the masochist who volunteered to support this
>>> obscure insecure and hitherto-unsupported scripting language?
>>>
>> https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports?view=3Drevision&revision=3D455800
>>
>> I'd agree we should pull the plug on the package. We'll be in for the
>> usual "but it works for me" screaming of the irresponsible people who
>> don't care (and most of them won't know that they need to write the
>> exception/error handling themselves in their .procmailrc recipes).
>>
>> Sunpoet, can we mark the port as deprecated given that even the upstre=
am
>> once said it should best be abolished? I can't find the reference now,=

>> the procmail.org website displays "Site hosting in transit, informatio=
n
>> will be back up shortly."
>>
>
> Dear Matthias,
>
> As one of the "irresponsible" people who is still using procmail on
> our systems and has built an number of scripts and customer
> infrastructure around it I take exception to the term irresponsible.=C2=
=A0
> Perhaps the better word is overworked.=C2=A0 If I had the time to move =
to
> dovecot/sieve or maildrop as a local delivery agent I would have done
> so by now.
>
> Ted Hatfield

Dear Ted, Eugene,

I think if the procmail language were a bit more "regular", someone
would have written converter scripts long ago by now.

Other than that, I find it hard to believe that people don't have time
for over x in [3; 17] years to migrate, which in many cases would in my
book be more a situation of "I don't want to..." rather than "I am
unable to...". I don't mean to judge your situation, just that to me it
looks a matter that you have not yet found it important enough to bother.=


Given that the former maintainer asked OpenBSD to pull the plug on the
port already 37 months ago (see here
<https://marc.info/?l=3Dopenbsd-ports&m=3D141634350915839&w=3D2>) after
findings from fuzzing, and now to see security updates to a defunct
upstream port, I don't think we should keep the port around for much
longer. The expiration I was proposing isn't "axe it out now", we would
not normally do that, and it's at the maintainer's (i. e. sunpoet@'s)
discretion what expiration date, if any, will be set.

But the question if we as downstream packagers/providers want to step in
for a package abolished by the upstream almost a generation ago, is one
that needs serious consideration. I wouldn't endorse that the project
waste time on decrepit ports for which decent alternatives exist.


Best,
Matthias






Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?f68594db-396b-0821-e90d-3f089781e8fd>