Future popularity-contest can also use HTTP (page 256)

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Reported on: 2005-07-25

In chapter 5. The Debian package management system on page 256:

In section 5.11.10, the popularity-contest package is introduced as a programme sending email to a central server that aggregates the data and generates statistics. Future versions of popularity-contest can optionally use the HTTP protocol as well and thus do not require a mail transport agent (such as exim4) to be installed on every system that gathers statistics.

Discussion

Specifically desktop systems do not usually require a complete mail spool setup (e.g. exim4). While Debian releases leading up to and including sarge require a local mail transport agent, it will be optional starting with etch whether a machine should be able to queue mail and send it out to other mail servers, or whether fat client programmes such as Mozilla Thunderbird will simply hand outgoing mail off to the provider's smarthost. Thus, users wanting a simple desktop machine will not have to bother with the configuration of exim4 when installing new systems post-sarge.

Credits

Andreas Fester