On Wed, 16 Jan 2008, John Jetmore wrote:
> Is this a good idea? Is the motivation primarily ease of maintenance or
> is there perceived value to the end user? This change will significantly
> increase my own server maintenance and I don't even maintain that many
> servers. I love the fact that exim has always been self contained if
> desired.
Strictly, Exim has never been self-contained, because it needs a DBM
library. In its early days, before pretty well every distribution had a
DBM library, people had to install one when they installed Exim. PCRE is
kind of in the same boat - originally it was rare, but nowadays, most
distributions have it.
> Perhaps it could be a build-time option to use an onboard pcre vs a system
> pcre?
Lately, the onboard PCRE has become more and more of a hack, because the
"real" PCRE's build system has changed a lot. If I hadn't retired,
sooner or later I would have made this change. Of course you are right
about ease of maintenance, but on at least one occasion there was a
different kind of problem when Exim was linked against something (can't
remember what - maybe a database?) that itself used PCRE, but expected
the system version - so clashes of function name occurred.
I'm sorry if it gives you more work, but I do think it is the "right way
to go".
Philip
--
Philip Hazel
--
## List details at http://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-dev Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ##
> Is this a good idea? Is the motivation primarily ease of maintenance or
> is there perceived value to the end user? This change will significantly
> increase my own server maintenance and I don't even maintain that many
> servers. I love the fact that exim has always been self contained if
> desired.
Strictly, Exim has never been self-contained, because it needs a DBM
library. In its early days, before pretty well every distribution had a
DBM library, people had to install one when they installed Exim. PCRE is
kind of in the same boat - originally it was rare, but nowadays, most
distributions have it.
> Perhaps it could be a build-time option to use an onboard pcre vs a system
> pcre?
Lately, the onboard PCRE has become more and more of a hack, because the
"real" PCRE's build system has changed a lot. If I hadn't retired,
sooner or later I would have made this change. Of course you are right
about ease of maintenance, but on at least one occasion there was a
different kind of problem when Exim was linked against something (can't
remember what - maybe a database?) that itself used PCRE, but expected
the system version - so clashes of function name occurred.
I'm sorry if it gives you more work, but I do think it is the "right way
to go".
Philip
--
Philip Hazel
--
## List details at http://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-dev Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ##