RE: [qmailadmin-devel] alias/valias recap

[Benjamin T. <bto...@so...>]

> > -QA needs to be aware and provide support for both .qmail (cdb)
> and valias
> > (vmysql) configurations, probably by default.  It will probably
> be necessary
> > to have configure flag(s) to determine which behaviour should be default
> > (???), though I would imagine that if vpopmail is using a sql
> back end, then
> > valias should be the default.
>
> QA (when valias support is added) will read from both sources always.
> As Bill Shupp mentioned earlier, there is no reason to have a configure
> flag to turn valias on -- it can be automatically determined if vpopmail
> was configured with valias support (not just if vpopmail is using a sql
> backend).
>
QA should have read support for both, but it will also need to determine
during the configure which it should use when creating new aliases.  It is
quite possible that someone might be running with vmysql and yet is not
using valiases, but instead .qmail files.  It is also, then, quite possible
that that person would wish to continue using .qmail files instead of valias
files.  Thus, a configure option will be necessary to override the default
behaviour of using valias in those instances where an admin would prefer to
continue using .qmail files.

> > -My personal thought: if QA defaults to writing valias format, then it
> > should also auto-detect .qmail aliases and either automagically
> convert it
> > to valias, or at least prompt the admin to convert to the new format.
>
> There's no reason to do that, if the person decides to start using
> valias instead of .qmail files, they can run the vcalias application.
>
Is it absolutely necessary to require a mass conversion?  This would require
a green admin to actually know about valias, vcalias, etc.  Thus, it seems
to be me that it would be very beneficial to have QA auto-detect that .qmail
and valias co-exist and prompt the admin to convert from .qmail to valias.
That is, assuming that we think valias is the better way to go between the
two (which I'm thinking is true since mysql tends to hold data in RAM
whereas .qmail files require disk IO).