Re: [HHITP] mailutils 3.2

[Ken Brown <kbrown@cornell.edu>]

On 3/27/2017 3:32 PM, Yaakov Selkowitz wrote:
> On 2017-03-24 14:54, Ken Brown wrote:
>> This is a half-hearted ITP for GNU mailutils
>> (https://www.gnu.org/software/mailutils/mailutils.html).  I'd like some
>> feedback before I proceed.
>>
>> My only interest in mailutils is that it provides a utility
>> movemail.exe, which is used by emacs.[*]  But I looked into providing a
>> complete build of mailutils and various subpackages along the lines of
>> Debian[**], and it turned out to be straightforward.  My cygport file
>> and patches are attached.  I ran the testsuite, and there were 42
>> failures and 3 skips out of 978 tests.  The failures ought to be looked
>> at, but I don't this is too bad.
>
> FWIW, even on Debian, the tests succeed until comsatd tests 2-7 all
> fail, at which point make check terminates.  So if those are your first
> failures, it may just be the testsuite.

No, the comsatd tests all pass.  The failures I'm seeing are in imap4d, 
maidag, and sieve.  And for some reason that I haven't figured out, the 
pop3d tests aren't run.  The tests use dejagnu, and they report that 
runtest can't be found.  But there are other tests that use dejagnu and 
do find runtest, so I'm puzzled.

> Not a full review, but noticed a few things:
>
>> libmailutils5_CONTENTS="
>>   --exclude=usr/bin/
>>   usr/bin/cyg*-5.dll
>>   usr/lib/mailutils/*.dll"
>
> What happens when a future version ships libmailutils6?  As is, the
> modules will collide.  Are the modules used by the libraries directly,
> or are they for the daemons?

The modules provide extensions to the Sieve mail-filtering language and 
are used only by the latter.  They are apparently loaded on demand by 
"require" statements in Sieve scripts.  Should I put them in a separate 
subpackage (say, libmailutils-sieve-extensions)?

>> mailutils_mh_CONTENTS="
>>   usr/bin/mu-mh
>>   usr/share/mailutils/mh"
>
> A /usr/bin/mu-mh directory would violate the FHS (4.4.2: "There must be
> no subdirectories in /usr/bin.").  Depending on how these are used, one
> of /usr/{lib,libexec}/mu-mh would make more sense.

According to the Mailutils manual, "The primary aim of this 
implementation is to provide an interface between Mailutils and Emacs 
using mh-e module."  I've looked at Emacs's mh-e.el, and it expects to 
find the programs in /usr/local/bin/mu-mh or /usr/bin/mu-mh.  So I think 
we're stuck with this.  FWIW, Debian packages mailutils-mh the same way.

Thanks for looking at this.

Ken