Re: Exim-4.99

On Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 04:10:27PM +0000, Jeremy Harris via Exim-users wrote:
>The name "exim4" is a Debian thing.
>The Exim project moved on from Exim version 3 in 2004.  We are over twenty years
>up the line from there.

So is Debian. We stopped shipping exim 3 in 2007.

The only thing we didn't do yet is renaming the package back to exim.  
That's a major, error prone effort (especially if we did it the complete 
way and moving /etc/exim4, /var/log/exim4, /var/lib/exim4 etc to their 
respective s/4// values). Debian prides itself to support upgrades and 
to make those updates as painless as possible, and doing this gratuitous 
rename WILL cause trouble. Thus, we generally try to avoid these things.
We still ship apache as apache2, for example). And the apache 1 => 
apache 2 migration way way easier than going from exim 3 to exim4, exim4 
is totally incompatible to exim 3 both configuration and concept-wise.

This would actually not be that big an issue if exim upstream would 
stop complaining about that. I guess that by far the largest number of 
exim's installation base comes from our exim4 packages, so accepting 
that will probably help novice users to be less confused.

I acknowledge this is less than ideal but given that the MTA war was won 
ten years ago by postfix, I think that Debian is unlikely to go through 
those motions of renaming.

Greetings
Marc

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc Haber         | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header
Leimen, Germany    |  lose things."    Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 6224 1600402
Nordisch by Nature |  How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 6224 1600421

-- 
## subscription configuration (requires account):
##   https://lists.exim.org/mailman3/postorius/lists/exim-users.lists.exim.org/
## unsubscribe (doesn't require an account):
##   [email protected]
## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/
## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/