Exim 4.100 without identd (RFC 1413) support?

Hi,

I was surprised to learn that with commit 106c3eb (via merge eb39a35),
support for identd according to RFC 1413 was completely removed for the
next Exim version (4.100). Was there an announcement or discussion about
this that I missed?

| JH/02 Support for identd (RFC 1413) lookups on received connections is removed.
|       This includes the main options "rfc1413_query_timeout" and
|       "rfc1413_hosts", the debug option "ident" and the log_selector name
|       "ident_timeout"; using any will result in an error.
|       The default options had the lookup disabled since 4.86.

We need and use identd when emails are sent from the university's large
central servers, which have approximately 70,000 interactive Linux
accounts, to mail relay servers running Exim. Identd allows us to identify
the originating account. Removing this feature, which has been used for
many years, is causing problems. To my knowledge, there is currently no
replacement for identd.

Is there any chance that the removal of identd will be reversed? I'm not
aware of any problems with it over the many years of use, and I haven't
seen any bug reports for it in Exim.

Best regards,
Heiko

Heiko Schlichting                Freie Universität Berlin * IT
[email protected]   Fabeckstraße 32
Telefon +49 30 838-54327         14195 Berlin