Bug#714634: [lsb-discuss] Clarification of general LSB requirements

Steve Langasek <[email protected]> writes:

> I don't think there's any problem here wrt the LSB standard, but I'm not
> thrilled about the package-wise implementation of lsb-invalid-mta,
> particularly from the perspective of a Debian derivative which does not
> ship an MTA by default.

>  - user installs a stock system with no MTA.
>  - user installs lsb-core so they can install an LSB package
>  - user installs a package that Depends: mail-transport-agent
>  - user gets a system without a usable MTA, only because they installed
>    lsb-core first

> I would argue that lsb-invalid-mta is a perfectly valid solution for
> lsb-core, but that it should not Provide: mail-transport-agent - so that
> any packages that actually say "yes, I require an MTA" get the default
> MTA and not the lsb-invalid-mta bodge.

Yeah, I agree with this, and also that lsb-core should actually depend on:

    default-mta | mail-transport-agent | lsb-invalid-mta

to achieve this so that lsb-invalid-mta isn't the default choice.  I think
that's separate than the more general standards issue under discussion
here (it still wouldn't prohibit the installation of lsb-core with
lsb-invalid-mta), but I think that change would be a quality of
implementation improvement in the LSB package.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email protected])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>