bug#25789: [PATCH] services: Add exim-service-type.

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Carlo,

Carlo Zancanaro <address@hidden> skribis:

> This adds a new service type for exim, the MTA. I've tested it locally
> and been able to send and receive emails through telnet in a VM. I
> haven't tried it on a real machine with all other bits and pieces that
> would involve.

Neat!

Do you think you could turn the test you describe here into an actual
test?  That would be great.  See the files under gnu/tests for examples.

> The configuration at the moment just lets you specify a file to use as
> the exim configuration. I trust that this is okay in the short term
> (although I understand we're keen on having a scheme interface for
> configuration in future).

Yup, longer-term a Scheme interface would be nice.

> My one major concern with this service is that it writes to
> /etc/aliases. This isn't ideal, but the default exim configuration uses
> /etc/aliases, and fails to do anything if it can't find the file. There
> are a few ways we could fix this (my favourite being to write a new
> configuration file in the store which is just the user-supplied one with
> /etc/aliases re-written into another store path that we generate), so
> I'm open to input/direction in what to do.

Does exim write to /etc/aliases, or does it simply read it?  I would
expect it to just read it.

As for populating /etc/aliases, I agree that this should ideally not be
specific to exim.  One option would be to have a separate
‘mail-aliases-service-type’.  ‘exim-service-type’ would extend it,
possibly with just the empty list, which would ensure that the service
is present.

WDYT?

> From 48e37051501b5006a9bd8ff941958732a50de6ec Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Carlo Zancanaro <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2017 10:32:58 +1100
> Subject: [PATCH] services: Add exim-service-type.
>
> * gnu/services/mail.scm (<exim-configuration>): New record type.
> (exim-computed-config-file, exim-shepherd-service, exim-activation, exim-etc,
> exim-profile): New procedures.
> (exim-service-type, %exim-accounts): New variables.
> * doc/guix.text (Mail Services): Document it.

I think it’s already useful as it is so I committed it.

I added copyright lines for you and reformatted a couple of lines that
were too long.

Thank you!

Ludo’.