Re: getmail failing for messages with invalid uncode

Michael Grant <[email protected]> Thu, 14 Oct 2021 22:33:04 -0400
Newsgroups	gmane.mail.getmail.user
Message-ID	<YWjoYKiwpaGXZ/[email protected]>
On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 09:08:39PM +0200, Roland Puntaier wrote:
> Please don't report issues regarding getmail6 (getmail with adaptations to work with Python3)
> on the getmail mailing list.
> The place for getmail6 is https://github.com/getmail6/getmail6.
> It says so in the README.
> I wouldn't like to produce any burden for Charles by my attempt to make
> getmail available for Python3.

Wow.  So how did we get here?

First off, I've been using getmail for years now.  The documentation
I've been using has for me always been here:
http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/.  I've built my config file using
this site, been using it for years now.

In fact, I very likely had been using getmail 5 or earlier versions
until it was withdrawn from debian and I did not even notice.  Hence,
when you say it's in the README, what a slap in the face, this README,
I would never have read!

Had getmail 6 and getmail 5 been completely different programs, this
little detail of the version number would not have tripped me up here.
The fact that I had been using this for a long time, that the config
files are identical (at least backwards compatible), that the man page
does not really offer nearly as good examples as Charles' website, and
that the man page for getmail 6 lists Charles in the copyright which
matches the Propus.ca website!

When I posted to this mailing list, I didn't even think this was a bug
in getmail itself.  I figured the bug was in one of the dependent
python libs and was looking for some workaround.  I already filed a
bug on that library to which it remains unanswered.  I'd already spent
days debugging this trying to fix this in the library without success.

Second, Charles, why not update to the current python3?  Is it that
difficult?  Or why not look at what Roland has done in his adaptation?
From my point of view as a user of this software, it seems like he's
tried to contribute and done you a favor.  Can your two projects be
coalesced into one?

As a meer user of this project, I have no control over Debian's choice
to deprecate python2.  I myself had to update some scripts to python3.
I don't really understand the politics here of why some people prefer
python2.  Things evolve, versions change, things always seem to need
updating.  From my perspective, the Python folks no longer wanted to
support python 2, the Debian folks didn't want to continue supporting
it either.  Your package is in an out of date language.  Roland seems
to have done you a favor here to help update it.

Roland, you do realize your adaptation is now in Debian (and maybe
other repos)?  It looks like your version was packaged up for Debian
by Sudip Mukherjee who I've cc'ed now to bring into this mess.

By keeping the name and even one upping the version number to 6 like
you did, you've perpetuated this confusion and effectively hi-jacked
Charles' project.

If you intend on keeping this as a separate project, if you guys can't
agree to merge things, then I definitely think you should rename it to
something else.  For example getmail-rp, getmail-py3, neogetmail...?
And probably start your version at 1. I think there's a way in the
package to warn users of changes like this if such a package is
installed.  Perhaps Sudip would be kind enough to make that happen if
you do change the package name.  I did not check if the same mess
exists in the rpm world or other package systems.

I had no idea the mess here when I tried to get some help.

Michael Grant
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