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Date:      Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:43:44 -0700
From:      pete wright <nomadlogic@gmail.com>
To:        Lars Eighner <luvbeastie@larseighner.com>
Cc:        Jonathan McKeown <j.mckeown@ru.ac.za>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, utisoft@gmail.com
Subject:   Re: Why is sendmail is part of the system and not a package?
Message-ID:  <57d710000910271843p53a05152vfb20ffce418bc604@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20091027202430.X92294@qroenaqrq.6qbyyneqvnyhc.pbz>
References:  <4AE5F897.3000103@rawbw.com> <200910270916.31033.j.mckeown@ru.ac.za> <20091027021723.M88213@qroenaqrq.6qbyyneqvnyhc.pbz> <b79ecaef0910270216q14421922w4acf62103322c16a@mail.gmail.com> <20091027142502.Q91143@qroenaqrq.6qbyyneqvnyhc.pbz> <b79ecaef0910271341y1aea61a6pd7bcd6c96855da64@mail.gmail.com> <20091027191626.T92033@qroenaqrq.6qbyyneqvnyhc.pbz> <57d710000910271741p7429d4feh150ecbe6cddd3d2e@mail.gmail.com> <20091027202430.X92294@qroenaqrq.6qbyyneqvnyhc.pbz>

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On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 6:24 PM, Lars Eighner
<luvbeastie@larseighner.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, pete wright wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Lars Eighner
>> <luvbeastie@larseighner.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> You guessed wrong.
>>>>
>>>> We use m4, which cuts out most of the crap that you had to write into
>>>> sendmail.cf. You write sendmail.mc and compile it. Sendmail.mc on my
>>>> system is less than 50 lines long, including comments.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.sendmail.org/m4/intro.html
>>>
>>> That's as poorly documented and incomprehensible as .cf by hand. =A0Wha=
t is
>>> your interest in sendmail? =A0Are you connected with it in someway?
>>> =A0Surely,
>>> yours could not be the opinion of someone who doesn't get a piece of
>>> O'Reilly's royalties. =A0It's the same old crap, give the software away=
,
>>> sell
>>> the documentation.
>
>> well shit man - Eric's actually a super nice guy and has made some
>> major contributions to computing so I reckon he deserves *some*
>> respect for the work he's done on sendmail.
>
> Evidently by making it necessary to learn yet another scripting language
> to configure it. =A0Other than personal profit I cannot see why people ar=
e
> clinging like grim death to something this fubar. =A0Really, let's go pas=
t
> this one more time:
>

ok i'm just gonna suggest you read up on the history of sendmail to
gain some perspective on why/when it was written.  i'm not saying that
there are no issues with it - but i think some historical perspective
would do you a world of good.

regarding having to learn a new language i'm not sure about that as i
wouldn't say i "know" m4 - but I can rtfm, and the default .mc files
are actually well documented.  so yea...

> "Sure, sendmail.cf is hard to work with so the solution is you learn m4!"
>
> Did you look at the link he offered? =A0How helpful is that?
>
> Beside which, m4 is a PORT. =A0So if sendmail is not configurable without=
 a
> port, why isn't it a port?

sure it's a port, sendmail is a port too.  but that does not mean you
need to install the port to compile custom .mc files for your server.
in fact if you check out /etc/mail/Makefile you might notice that m4
is actually part of the base system:
/usr/bin/m4

anywho i should stop feeding the troll.

-p

--=20
pete wright
www.nycbug.org



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