devscripts pulls in Postfix by default: Should Suggest instead of Recommend bsd-mailx | mailutils
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
devscripts (Debian) |
Fix Released
|
Unknown
|
|||
devscripts (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
Binary package hint: devscripts
Because Recommended packages get installed by default, installing devscripts on a fresh install pulls in a complete MTA as an indirect result of Recommending these mailers.
Setting up an MTA is not easy to automate, so users will either be pestered with Debconf questions and may need to edit configuration files and do testing to get the MTA running succesfully and securely, or they will have to manually uninstall it after installing devscripts, or they will need to install it with apt-get --no-install-
All of the utilities which might need access to a mailer are described as such in the package description, and all will fail gracefully (as far as I can tell) with a descriptive message if one is not available.
Compare with the reportbug package, whose sole purpose is reporting bugs by email, which merely Suggests a mailer.
Kind regards,
Alain
Related branches
summary: |
- Should Suggest instead of Recommend bsd-mailx | mailutils + devscripts pulls in Postfix by default: Should Suggest instead of + Recommend bsd-mailx | mailutils |
Changed in devscripts (Debian): | |
status: | Unknown → New |
Changed in devscripts (Debian): | |
status: | New → Fix Committed |
Changed in devscripts (Debian): | |
status: | Fix Committed → Fix Released |
Indeed. I was kind of surprised when I installed the devscripts and ended up with full-blown Postfix installed on my laptop.