Bug#329988: Bug submitter not reachable via e-mail

Shyamal Prasad shyamalprasad at verizon.net
Sat Oct 1 21:56:00 UTC 2005


    "Marc" == Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages at zugschlus.de> writes:

    Marc> I am not too fond of that idea since it replicates
    Marc> information which might cause it going inconsistent in case
    Marc> of changes. 

Hi Marc,

I understand the concern, and I did spend considerable time trying to
write a patch that minimized replication of information. But, yes,
there a tiny bit of replication.

The added text refers to information that would either be unlikely to
change (the use of dc_use_split_config, conf.d/main, and
exim4.conf.localmacros) or is directly related to SMTP-AUTH (the
AUTH_CLIENT_ALLOW_NOTLS_PASSWORDS macro, which is actually not
described in any other README file).


    Marc> Additionally, people _need_ to read the docs, and I do not
    Marc> like the idea of imposing additional work and error
    Marc> possibilities on the maintainer for the sake of supporting
    Marc> people too lazy to read documentation.

Agreed that people need to read the docs, but IMHO in the exim4 docs
it seems that the odds are stacked against users a bit. In the current
set up we are expecting users to read and understand many details
about the package (e.g. TLS for a server, the various daemons,
benefits about split/unsplit configs etc.) before they get to a
description about customizing the already installed set up (the
relevant text is in the paragraph on line 266 of the 617 line file, or
about 40% into the file). Developers care about all this 'other'
stuff, users typically do not. 

Also, please note that for all my other failings I am *not* a lazy
Debian user. I did read the docs and found the experience painful, and
I even took the trouble to suggest a patch for my wishlist bug ;-)

If you don't believe there is a real problem you are welcome to tag
this wonfix (I certainly would not be offended). If you think the
documentation could be improved (e.g. changes to
README.Debian.gz instead) I volunteer to help. I can write......

Cheers!
Shyamal






More information about the Pkg-exim4-maintainers mailing list