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

Le jeudi, 11 juillet 2013 02.27:52, Russ Allbery a écrit :
> Steve Langasek <[email protected]> writes:
> > If lsb-core is going to pull in default-mta as the preferred
> > option, then arguably lsb-invalid-mta shouldn't exist at all (or
> > at least, there's no reason to label it an 'lsb' package).  I
> > think the purpose of the package is to let lsb-core be installed
> > without automatically pulling in an MTA that has to be configured,
> > and default-mta | mail-transport-agent | lsb-invalid-mta wouldn't
> > achieve that.
> > 
> > But I think dropping the Provides: from lsb-invalid-mta would.
> 
> Ah, I see.  Hm.
> 
> I do think that the behavior a user most likely expects, when
> installing lsb-core, is to pull in a functional MTA.  In other
> words, I think it's fine to provide a way for a sysadmin to select
> to not configure an MTA, but I do think that installing lsb-core
> should result in configuring an MTA by default.

I am of the opposite opinion: if an administrator decided to uninstall 
the default-mta as installed by Debian, then the installation of lsb-
core should respect that choice and not impose the configuration of an 
MTA, especially because lsb-* is meant as a compliance layer, not a 
functional layer (in my understanding).

As argued before in this bug, LSB only formally requires the presence of 
a compliant sendmail command, not that this one does anything useful.

I think I quite like Steve's line: make lsb-invalid-mta stop providing 
mail-transport-agent. In all but unusual Debian installations (in which 
the administrator decided to remove all MTAs), the installation of lsb-
core will result in the re-use of the installed MTA.

Cheers,

OdyX