Re: proposed package removal: mail/dovecot (1.2.17)

["Thomas Mueller" <mueller6724%bellsouth.net@localhost>]

from Greg Troxel:

> My impression is that pretty much everyone using dovecot runs
> mail/dovecot2 which is now at 2.2.28, and that this has been true for a
> very long time.
        
> mail/dovecot is at 1.2.17, and was updated to that version on
> 2011-05-13.  About a month later the sieve version was updated.  The
> only real change since then was a CVE remediation patch on 2015-01-23.
> Plus revbumps, SMF fixes, and other minor maintenance that does indicate
> that upstream is paying attention or that there are real users.
        
> Is anyone using it?  Could you explain why?  Would anybody object to
> removing the package?  Please feel free to object/explain in private
> mail if it's too embarassing (but this is a clue) and if any I'll report
> the count of anonymous objectors and their reasons here.

> Please note that I am not proposing to rename mail/dovecot2.  My view is
> usually that once a package needs to have two versions, that's likely a
> condition for life, and renaming PKGNAME hurts more than it helps.  I am
> merely trying to avoid someone doing "cd /usr/pkgsrc/mail/dovecot &&
> make replace" by accident.

> If there are no objections, I'll remove mail/dovecot, no earlier than a
> week from now: 2017-04-06 0100Z.

With regard to renaming, FreeBSD ports has ways to rename a port/package without severe disruption.

Portupgrade and portmaster can update a port/package whose name has changed, like if dovecot2 were renamed to dovecot:

portupgrade -o mail/dovecot2 mail/dovecot
portmaster -o mail/dovecot2 mail/dovecot

also, pkg can rename a package's entry in the package database:

pkg set -o mail/dovecot2:mail/dovecot   or
pkg set -n dovecot2:dovecot

I believe pkg was ported to (NetBSD) pkgsrc recently, along with synth.

This pkg (pkgng) is not package-database-compatible with the older pkg_* tools.

I don't see much if anything on the newer pkg or John Marino's synth on this list, pkgsrc-users or tech-pkg.

But still better not to rename a package without good reason.

That said, I don't use the old, outdated dovecot 1.2.17.

Tom