Re: [libesmtp-devel] Away for a bit

[Charles Kerr <charles rebelbase com>]

> I'd prefer to have package maintainers do the RPMs and debs for me.  Someday 
> I'll get around to linking to them.  CVS would be good, but UK Linux don't 
> provide that, at least not yet.  (Sourceforge do obviously but they are in 
> the US and I'm a proud European writing crypto support into libESMTP ;)

You might want to look at http://www.berlios.de/, which appears to be
a sourceforge clone running sourceforge software.

>> 1. If ssl is only used for md5, and we've already got md5 in
>>    libesmtp, then why are we looking for ssl and adding it as a
>>    dependency by default?
> 
> It provides the STARTTLS support for opportunistic crypto in SMTP too.  
> STARTTLS provides hop by hop security which is sometimes useful, e.g. it 
> protects the message envelope from passive attack.  Look in smtp-tls.c, I 
> haven't got round to doicumenting this stuff yet.

Sounds good.

>> 2. Do we need plugins, and if so, do we have to use libtool for
> 
> Yes, for the SASL authentication mechanisms.  I want to be able to add more 
> mechanisms without having to reinstall the whole SMTP API - particular 
> benefit to statically linked apps.

Also sounds good.

>> * I can't install Balsa on my Mandrake box from RPMs because of
>>   libesmtp's "libltdl.so.0" dependency.  rpmfind can't find Mandrake
>>   packages for this, and Mandrake Cooker is still on Balsa 1.1.0.
> 
> I must emphasise that libltdl is distributed in the tarball, so apart from 
> the crypto code, libESMTP is self contained.  configure has an 
> --enable-ltdl-install option.  Perhaps this should be used when building the 
>
> I presume the .spec.in file can be changed to supply the right configure 
> options for creating libltdl.so when creating the RPMs and have them install 
> that.  To date I rely on people like Carlos and Cristophe for the RPM stuff 
> - I've had a steep enough learning curve with auto*/libtool etc etc.  All 
> patches gratefully received. (In fact the recent changes in libESMTP have 
> mostly been build related.)

:)

This puts it in much better perspective.  Sounds like maybe there are a few
more tweaks that need to be made to the spec file but that things are
basically okay.  Thanks for the info...

cheers,
Charles