[Pkg-dspam-misc] Bug#577661: Status of DSPAM in Debian

[Julien Valroff]

Hi Stevan,

Good to hear from you!

Le lundi 28 mars 2011 à 01:31:34 (+0200 CEST), Stevan Bajić a écrit :
> On Sat, 26 Mar 2011 22:20:48 +0100
> Ana Guerrero <ana at debian.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 10:16:00PM +0100, Julien Valroff wrote:
> > > 
> > > I plan to upload current git snapshot to experimental very soon - not
> > > everything was tested as much as I would have expected, and I think some
> > > documentation would need to be checked/rephrased/updated but the package has
> > > been in use on several production servers for some time now, which makes me
> > > confident for the future.
> > >
> > 
> > Experimental is experimental after all :-)
> >
> Maybe the Debian package is experimental but the product it self is not
> experimental. 

Ana and I were refering to the Debian package - you know I am using several
instances of DSPAM in production, and I am totally confident with the
product itself.

The big challenge with packaging it for Debian is that it must suit to most
setups and the aim of the package is to make it as easy as possible for the
sysadmin.

I alone cannot test everything, but I was waiting to get more feedbacks from
the various users of "my" unofficial packages before uploading it to the
official archive.

The experimental archive is actually for this kind of package - and as I am
now certain the package is not totally broken, I'll upload it there to get
even more feedback.

> I know the codebase pretty well and I would say that the current 3.9.x
> series of DSPAM is by far the best DSPAM you can get today. I might be
> biased but I think by looking at the GIT commit history you will see
> yourself that many bug fixes, memory leaks and stability issues have been
> resolved.

At first, I was also waiting for 3.9.1 to be released ;)

I'll upload a snapshot of the current HEAD to Debian as it also adds a few
fixes and improvements.

[...]
> I am no Debian user and maybe I don't understand the whole thing.... but
> why is it so hard to get an updated version of DSPAM into Debian? What is
> the problem? How can I help? What needs to be done in order to allow
> Debian users to enjoy a more recent DSPAM version?

I'd say the package is ready, though not widely tested and might still
contain a few issues.

Stevan, you also know I have almost no knowledge in C, which explains why I
was at first reluctant in maintaing the package alone.

You have offered your help several times in the past, and I know I can rely
on you in case something important happens. This is more than what any
Debian Developer can expect from any upstream developer.

I also realise I have been maintaining my unofficial packages for 3 to 4
years without any major breakage (but with a much smaller userbase than
Debian of course) [0].

> Regarding documentation: Tell me what needs to be rephrased or rewritten
> or added and I will do it. Just send me patches for existing text or send
> me new text and I will commit it. I think the DSPAM project never rejected
> changes in the past regarding documentation.

I was refering to the documentation of the Debian package itself.

What most users expect is to get a fully working DSPAM setup very quickly. I
know it is not possible to make it automatically, but I'd like to give them
a good experience of both DSPAM and Debian.

For example, the package now ships a sample of Apache configuration - I need
to check it works on a clean install etc.

> Regarding confidence: The Rice University is using DSPAM since ages for
> all their students. I think they have about 65'000 mail boxes that they
> filter with DSPAM. If DSPAM would be unstable or unusable then they would
> for sure not use it. Beside that the DSPAM mailing list is full of users
> using DSPAM in various scenarios. Just recently Nate Custer from
> Hostgator.com said on the DSPAM mailing list that they filter mail for 3
> million mail boxes with DSPAM. If that does not speak for DSPAM then I
> don't know what would?

I use it at home for 3 users (including my 2yo son) which proves how
scalable DSPAM is ;)

Cheers,
Julien

[0] I had first begun working on backporting the existing packages for
Sarge, then have packaged 3.8.0 a few months after it was released by SN.

-- 
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