Re: QMAILDIR wart

On 15 Apr 2026, at 10:39, Jonathan Perkin wrote:

> When building qmail-related packages, they break if QMAILDIR (e.g. 
> /var/qmail) exists.  This causes problems in bulk builds if a builder 
> has already attempted to install a qmail-related package:
>
>   https://github.com/NetBSD/pkgsrc/blob/trunk/mail/qmail/INSTALL#L11-L25

Trying to reconstruct my intention, I _think_ I was trying to protect 
against pkgsrc messing with a /var/qmail we hadn’t put there 
ourselves. Longstanding tradition among qmail admins is to install 
manually to that path, and /var/qmail is outside PREFIX, so I was erring 
on the side of failing to install rather than perhaps blowing away 
someone’s config and/or queue.

I definitely also intended that when /var/qmail doesn’t already exist, 
not only should mail/qmail install without error, but also uninstalling 
promptly afterward should be able to remove /var/qmail, so that it could 
be repeatedly installed/uninstalled like any other package, at least 
before any custom config has been done. I’d expect it leaves a few 
crumbs if an admin has done some config after install, and none 
otherwise.

If that’s not so, I’m interested to fix it. Can you provide more 
details about what’s getting left behind on uninstall?

- Amitai