Ubuntu
dovecot package

Forced mysql (and other) dependencies in dovecot

Bug #184364 reported by J. Javier Maestro
2
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
dovecot (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Tollef Fog Heen

Bug Description

Binary package hint: dovecot-imapd

Hi,

I was trying to install dovecot-imapd on Gutsy (clean install). When I was about to accept the install prompt, I realised that dovecot-imapd was trying to force me into installing libmysqlclient15off and mysql-common.

Now, I do not want any MySQL stuff in my server, I am a happy PostgreSQL user and I actually run dovecot with PostgreSQL. I think dovecot should suggest the MySQL and PostgreSQL stuff, not force it.

Also, the installation should detect my PostgreSQL and thus should not force me to install anything else (it should suggest if I want to, I guess, but my installation of PostgreSQL does suffice for dovecot). Pretty much like other packages do... if, say, I want roundcube (a webmail), I install first php5-pgsql and thus the roundcube package does not try to install any mysql stuff.

Please fix this so everyone can have a nice and clean installation :)

Thank you very much!

Revision history for this message
Tollef Fog Heen (tfheen) wrote :

Given that /usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-auth links against libmysqlclient, you probably want that installed, unless you don't care about being able to log into your server.

Changed in dovecot:
assignee: nobody → tfheen
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
J. Javier Maestro (jjmaestro) wrote :

Right,

I do care about being able to log into my IMAP server, thank you very much. Now that we got that cleared up, you can read my post about me not using any mysql functionality in dovecot, since all my database-driven IMAP auth is done through postgres.

Perhaps a possible course of action is to offer several dovecot-auth packages, with a default dovecot-auth-filesystem or whatever that uses the basic password auth, and then other dovecot-auth-{pgsql,mysql,ldap,...}. Then, there would be dovecot-auth-full for those who need several of those installed at the same time.

I see it kind-of-like the apache2-mpm-worker and apache2-mpm-prefork, when one is installed, it uninstalls the other, etc. I don't know if this kind of packages are common, but I know that I would love to have them without having to manually recompile the src.

Cheers.

Revision history for this message
Tollef Fog Heen (tfheen) wrote : Re: [Bug 184364] Re: Forced mysql (and other) dependencies in dovecot

* "J. Javier Maestro"

| Perhaps a possible course of action is to offer several dovecot-auth
| packages, with a default dovecot-auth-filesystem or whatever that uses
| the basic password auth, and then other dovecot-
| auth-{pgsql,mysql,ldap,...}. Then, there would be dovecot-auth-full for
| those who need several of those installed at the same time.

In order to save about 3MB of disk space? I don't see any point in
the maintenance overhead.

| I see it kind-of-like the apache2-mpm-worker and apache2-mpm-prefork,
| when one is installed, it uninstalls the other, etc. I don't know if
| this kind of packages are common, but I know that I would love to have
| them without having to manually recompile the src.

-mpm-worker and -mpm-prefork are not possible to combine into one
package in any sane way and have very different performance and
feature characteristics, so the comparison doesn't hold.

In general, the policy is for packages to be compiled with all
features enabled rather than being able to turn features on and off.
The one big exception to this is X support where quite a few packages
exists both with and without X support.

--
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are

Revision history for this message
J. Javier Maestro (jjmaestro) wrote :

* "J. Javier Maestro"

|| Perhaps a possible course of action is to offer several dovecot-auth
|| packages, with a default dovecot-auth-filesystem or whatever that uses
|| the basic password auth, and then other dovecot-
|| auth-{pgsql,mysql,ldap,...}. Then, there would be dovecot-auth-full for
|| those who need several of those installed at the same time.

| In order to save about 3MB of disk space? I don't see any point in
| the maintenance overhead.

Well, I just don't like having unneeded stuff around.

|| I see it kind-of-like the apache2-mpm-worker and apache2-mpm-prefork,
|| when one is installed, it uninstalls the other, etc. I don't know if
|| this kind of packages are common, but I know that I would love to have
|| them without having to manually recompile the src.

| -mpm-worker and -mpm-prefork are not possible to combine into one
| package in any sane way and have very different performance and
| feature characteristics, so the comparison doesn't hold.
|
| In general, the policy is for packages to be compiled with all
| features enabled rather than being able to turn features on and off.
| The one big exception to this is X support where quite a few packages
| exists both with and without X support.

Well.. what a pity then! :-/ Thanks for the explanation.

Cheers

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