Re: [Nmh-workers] external MTA (was: nmh @ gsoc?)

[markus schnalke]

[2010-01-28 10:43] Ken Hornstein <address@hidden>
> >Instead of having one program inside nmh to forward, use one external
> >program to forward. The external program will surely do the job better
> >than the internal one. (Do you need reasons for this statement?)
> 
> Actually, you're going to have to provide some reasons ... I looked at
> the examples you provided (nullmailer and ssmtp), and they lack
> functionality that nmh provides, today (that's not to say that nmh
> can do everything those programs can, but my point is that nmh can
> do things that they cannot).

I just took two programs that came to my mind.

If nmh's mail forwarding code is good, then it might be worth to
exclude it into a standalone program, and have it as a dependency for
nmh (just like some library).


> And I guess I really don't understand
> your fundamental reasoning about external programs always being better
> than an internal one.

As I wrote in the other mail: I assume that you will do one job at a
time always better than two jobs at the same time.


> >For the user, shipping an own forwarder is not much different than
> >providing a good tutorial on how to use an external program for the
> >job. And if it is a problem, then this user is hardly a user of nmh
> >anyway.
> 
> So, you don't care about unsophisticated users, then?  You need a certain
> level of Unix configuration knowledge to use nmh?

Unsophisticated users will install nmh with a packaging system. Then
the appropriate external tools get installed automatically.

If one likes to install nmh from source, then the dependency on an
external tool is like the dependency to an external library.


meillo