On 10/21/12 12:01, Martin Husemann wrote: >> Is there a policy for or against patching external modules for new >> features? > > For usefull features it is possible, but requires to include a documentation > update. Sounds like a general usefull idea, was there any upstream reaction? After sending the patch it took two minutes to get a somewhat angry mail back about me not including a proper description of what the patch should accomplish. (My bad; I sent a one-line description). I replied with a longer description and I got no reply. With this particular developer, I tend to interpret silence as "silent agreement", since he's *very* quick to reply if he disagrees. With regards to documentation updates; if you mean documentation of what the patch accomplishes in technical terms, then there's no problem. But if you mean a "user documentation update", then it's a little trickier. The patch essentially adds support for something which the user probably would assume was there from the beginning, and there's no user interface change. I.e. it would be more correct to add to the documentation a warning if it *doesn't* support it. Specifically: Postfix supports verifying certificate chains and it supports SASL. The Dovecot SASL interface supports the client certificate chain verification chain attribute. I, and others, (incorrectly) assumed the two would simply plug together. With the patch, they do. It, IMHO, makes postfix (better) live up to the Principle of Least Surprise. -- Kind regards, Jan Danielsson
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