[OpenIndiana-discuss] Cyrus SASL ver 2 package missing binary files?

[Gary Mills]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2012 at 12:55:57PM -0600, Jerry Kemp wrote:
> 
> I am curious as to the thought process which included the library files and
> include headers, but excluded other parts.  I am sure that there is some thought
> process where this must make some sense, I just have figure out what that is/was.

A few years ago, I had the task of building a full-featured e-mail
server on a Solaris 10 platform.  I quickly discovered that Sun's
sendmail installation was unsuitable because it was missing some
features that I needed.  My philosophy is to use the vendor's product
whenever possible, but in this case it was not.  I had to build my own
from the current sendmail source, along with Cyrus SASL.

I can only speculate why this was the case.  Operating systems are
built of binary packages, but some products do not lend themselves to
this sort of installation.  Sendmail and SASL are examples, but the
PHP library is an even worse example.  The problem is much of the
configuration has to be done at compile time.  This is only done once
to build a package.  Consequently, somebody has to decide which
features to include and which to omit.  When the product includes
other products, it gets even more complicated.  You can't include all
features and all products because some of them conflict.  What's
happened recently is that the set of features that people need has
expanded.  Please file an RFE with your OS vendor to have the products
rebuilt with more features.

> And (completely unrelated), Oracle did the same thing with Solaris 11 GA.

They are related because the packages are all based on the same sources.

-- 
-Gary Mills-		-refurb-		-Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada-