Path: utzoo!censor!becker!bdb
From: bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Smail 3.X
Keywords: smail
Message-ID: <1376@becker.UUCP>
Date: 17 Dec 89 18:34:47 GMT
References: <18806@cfctech.UUCP>
Reply-To: bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker)
Organization: G. T. S., Toronto, Ontario
Lines: 46

In article <18806@cfctech.UUCP> alexb@cfctech.UUCP (Alex Beylin) writes:
|About a year ago there was a lot of talk about a smail re-write
|called "smail 3.0".  A bit later I heared that smail 3.1 was 
|out.  As far as I know nothing ever appeared in comp.sources.*
|and I have not seen any mention of smail 3.X in the last few month.
|
|Did smail ever graduate to Release 3?  Is is worth to upgrade from smail 2.5
|to the new one?  Our mail situation is getting more and more complex every day
|and we either are going to seriously patch existing smail (which means
|we will never upgrade to anything else), install sendmail (Not a trivial task
|on a SVR3 Unix with no sockets ot TCP/IP support) or write our own.
|
|Am I missing any alternatives?  Suggestions will be appreciated.

	I think you need to be specific as to what your
	actual limitations with smail 2.5 are.

	I've installed patches to smail 2.5 which -

		* allow "|" piping in the alias file
		* allow parsing of "%" in addresses
		* put dotted-host-name lookup before
		  domain subtree lookup
		* use "From: Name <user@host>"
		* use "Date: Sun, 17 Dec 1989 12:55:33 EST (-0500)"
		* various bug fixes & small enhancements

	Most of these patches came from the net or local
	sources.

	On the other hand, I've used smail 3.1 beta, which
	is quite nice & comprehensive. I can understand it
	right away, a fact which certainly isn't true about
	sendmail, in my case at least. It probably will be
	available soon, so it certainly is worth waiting for
	if you have a very complex mail setup. However, it
	is definite overkill for small sites and/or simple
	setups. Smail 2.5 is an easy port to the Amiga, for
	example, but 3.1 probably will never fit...

Cheers,
-- 
   ^^ 	 Bruce Becker	Toronto, Ont.
w \**/	 Internet: bdb@becker.UUCP, bruce@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu
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