[pkg-kolab] State of debian packages?

[Philip Hands]

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Hi Folks,

I've been intermittently trying to get kolab up and running for ages, but
not quite making it for one reason or another, so rather than using the
debian packages I thought I'd go for what as a Debianite strikes me as
second-best, and install using OpenPKG -- which just worked.

OK, so I could try to work out what's different, but since I used the
2.1rc1 version, that will presumably be another OpenPKG install of an older
version, and to be honest, I cannot be bothered because 2.1rc1 supports
multiple domains, whereas the debian packaged version is old enough not to,
and that seems like a feature I need.

On the other hand, I'm still not happy with moving to a mail system that is
relying on something other than native Debian packages.

So, what's the current status of this stuff -- it strikes me that not much
has happened of late, and I cannot say I'm all that surprised since it is
apparently uninstallable at present (at least I've managed to waste several
man days not getting a working system out of it a few times -- my current
failure is falling over because it seems impossible to persuade it to
deliver local mail *shrug*)

There are also some other odd little wrinkles going on that make me think
that if anyone is actually using this stuff, they are doing so by cheating,
with local repositories.

For example, kolabd depends on postfix, but debian's postfix doesn't yet
include the leaf patch from kolab, so it doesn't really satisfy kolabd's
requirements -- are the people using these packages just recompiling their
own postfix binaries and putting them up on a local repository?  or are
they not worrying about the lack of the patch? or is nobody actually
managing to use the Debian packages at all?

Also, if I'm going to put effort into getting this to a point where I can
use it, it strikes me that it would be a lot more productive to work on the
2.1rc1 code, since any patches we might need in kolab are much more likely
to be accepted into the trunk than an old release.  The fact that the SVN
for pkg-kolab seems to be stuck at the 1.9.4 kolabd version makes me think
that this effort has stalled -- is that right?  or are people beavering
away but not mentioning it here?  or is something else going on?

If this is still a vaguely viable effort, I'm happy to add my shoulder to
the wheel, but if it's died the I might as well spend my time more usefully
elsewhere.

My aim was to come up with a recipe for the new etch installer so that one
could (now that we have auto-install.udeb) type something like this at the
debian-installer boot prompt:

  boot:  auto url=http://hands.com/ classes=kolab

and go and make a coffee while your new kolab server installs itself, but
first I need to be able to install it by hand.

Cheers, Phil.
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