From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040914 Firefox/0.10 Description of problem: dovecot should obsolete imap (the old UW imap server) so that automated scripts will know what to upgrade to now that imap (UW) is no longer shipped with Fedora. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): dovecot-0.99.10.5-0.FC2
Sorry, I know your intentions are good, but we cannot do this either. This implies that dovecot is the only POP3/IMAP4 server you should use on Fedora, which is simply not true. As much as I personally would like to kill of "imap", it is just technically wrong to do this.
Bug #120678 is an earlier example of attempts to do something similar to what you suggest. There simply is no good way of doing it, so the best thing to do is nothing.
I disagree. You are thinking of imap as a feature, not as the specific package "imap". I want to obsolete the the old package, not every or any other imap server. There should be no problems. From everything I've read, as far as Red Hat is conerned, the UW imap server is obsolete unsupported. dovecot *does* obsolete it (and so does the cyrus imapd for that matter). Maybe there should be a feature called "imap-server" that both dovecot and cyrus could provide. Either way, that is independent of dovecot obsoleting imap the package.
Hi Jim: My understanding of the issue is that when you obsolete a package you are instructing the installer to replace it with its replacement. The key here is the replacement is singular. I don't think the installer, or for that matter rpm, knows how to deal with multiple choices, e.g. does doveot or cyrus-imapd replace UW imap? The installer's behavior with respect to the obsoletes tag is what prompted bug #127448, bug #129274, and bug #123989. So I would say there is a problem. If you have a solution that addresses the issues in those bug reports I'm all ears.
Hi John: An upgrade to cyrus from UW is not to be taken lightly since it has a custom mailbox format, whereas dovecot is a drop in replacement for the UW server. As far as I'm converned dovecot is *the* replacement. It was a bug to make cyrus obsolete imap. It wouldn't be the case for dovecot. I couldn't see #129274, so it may mention some other issue. Incidentally, it was my automated update program that led me to this problem in the first place, so I understand your concerns. If you included another reasonable replcement for UW, like say binc, then I could believe that your installer might have a problem, however I don't think rpm itself would since it doesn't make decisions about what to install. Maybe you meant up2date? Either way I don't see a conflict for the case at hand.
Hi Jim: I hope you realize no one is suggesting you upgrade from UW imap to cyrus, for some users that is the optimal choice, but not for all users. I think the issue turns on your belief that dovecot is the only sensible replacement. If that were true marking the rpm's as suggested would follow as a logical consequence. It was indeed a bug to have the obsolete tag in the cyrus spec file, it was accidently pulled in with an upstream merge. There is a belief here internally that admins should be explictly aware of any changes in the set of daemon services which are being run. Even if the installer replaced uw imap with dovecot the dovecot service would not be enabled, an admin would have to enable the service and sanity check some configuration options, it wouldn't be automatic. So if there has to be some "admin attention" why not have the admin make a conscious choice of imap servers at that juncture? There are a lot of ISP's who run our installations, especially RHEL, for that class of customer an "industrial strength" implementation is a more sensible choice and dovecot, while a very good implementation, has not risen to that level yet. So we're trying to encourage people to examine their needs and make a pro-active choice during a major installation upgrade. Whether this is right or wrong I grant you is open to debate and I hope we will consider everyone's input, including yours, and keep an open mind making the best choice possible.
I realize that you're not suggesting cyrus. Also, it's not that I think dovecot is the only sensible replacement. I also understand the need to explcitly enable dovecot. That was a reservation for me in suggesting this fix in the first place. FWIW, I assume that dovecot was added instead of keeping the UW server because it's better, so I take your action as an explicit recommendation that I should *at least* upgrade to dovecot. In other words, even if there is something better out there, there should be no major harm in using dovecot instead of what I was using the, admittedly crap, UW server. I just want to make this explicit so other admins might not have to spend the hours I spent in just figuring out that you had in fact added a non-cyrus imap server. Currently in FC2 I can't even install php-imap without removing my totally unrelated UW imap server. With this fix at least when I upgraded from RH9 I'd get php-imap and dovecot. Actually, php-imap (via staticly compiling libc-client) was just fixed to not obsolete imap anymore, so presumably as it stands now without dovecot obsoleting imap I would be able to go along using UW and never notice that you had replace it. This is better. Still, as a concervative admin, I'd like to know that your support had moved from imap to dovecot.