[CiderWebmail] Debian packaging and some comments

[Stefan Seifert]

Hi Jonas,

On Thursday 07 June 2012 13:30:43 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

> I am right now working on packaging CiderWebmail for Debian,

Great! As installation is probably the biggest hurdle for any Perl software, 
your effort can be of tremendous help.

> and
> stumbled into these issues:
> 
> 1.03 is newest release promoted at http://ciderwebmail.org/ - but
> https://github.com/niner/CiderWebmail apparently has a 1.04 prepared
> since a month - anthough not tagged as such.  For Debian I intend to
> package a snapshot of 1.04 (unless you convince me otherwise), but would
> prefer to instead package an official release of 1.04.

Definitely take the version from git. It is intended for release and we came 
quite far but then real life hit me again and the release never happened. But 
this week I'm finally seeing some light and hope to do the release tomorrow.

> CiderWebmail uses MIME::Lite which is discouraged by its author.  I
> recommend you to read the section "Wait!" of that module.  While at it,

Wow, I've been using this module for more than a decade. Sad to see it go. But 
I'll have a look at the alternatives. If they make sending UTF-8 mails any 
easier, while still allowing easy testing, I'm sold already ;)

> I suggest you to read the last point of section "Benign limitations"
> (because if you really wanted "lite" then you should maybe look at Mouse
> instead of Moose, or even e.g. Dancer instead of Catalyst).

Well the "lite" part of MIME::Lite has never been the selling point for me. 
More the ease of use and reliability. I'm not sure if a webmailer has to be so 
light weight anyway. Certainly not for me, but we're very open to user 
feedback.

> CiderWebmail uses Text::Flowed which is not currently in Debian.  I can
> package that (as I do other dependencies not yet available as Debian
> packages) but I wonder: Last release of that module was in 2001, and the
> much newer Text::Flow claims that all alternatives (at the time of
> writing that, which was 2006 apparently) only handles ASCII.  So perhaps
> instead of me packaging Text::Flowed it might make sense for you to
> switch to Text::Flow or some other even more modern module for that
> functionality?

Thanks for this hint as well. Mathias will have a look at alternatives, maybe 
Text::Autoformat.

> CiderWebmail uses Module::Install.  Cool!  I suggest you to consider
> switching to the (in my opinion) even cooler Module::Package::RDF :-)

noted

> Please do tell me if you prefer that I instead file bugreports for each
> such issue.  For me, this email was also an excuse to say...

There is a bug tracker at http://rt.ciderwebmail.org but whichever way you 
prefer is ok. We're not drowning in reports anyway :)

> Hi! Exciting work you've done here! I am eager to get rid of that last
> piece of PHP code (HORDE/IMP) on all servers that I am sysadmin for!!!

We feel your pain :) Been there as well when we started this.

Stefan