Mail server install questions

[Gerben Wierda]

> On 7 Sep 2019, at 19:10, Steven Thomas Smith <stsmith at monkeysaddle.com> wrote:
> 
>>> I have a few questions that arose during preparation (mostly because I was unable to find documentation for the port): I was looking at available documentation. There is a mail-server ‘aggregate’, but it wants X11. Why? How do I find out what variants I need.
>> I don’t know which dependency wants X11. The port dependencies are all independent MacPorts ports, so defer to their design.

The list that mail-server wants to install (given that I’ve already installed postfix, dovecot, and some more because I tried to workaround it) is very long.

And it seems to consists of a lot of stuff that is not needed at all for a mail server. It raises all these questions I don’t know an answer to and that stalls me. E.g.: Why is cyrus-sasl2 installed when cyrus isn’t there at all (we use dovecot)? Why is cairo (a vector drawing program) installed? Why does it install bind9 and dns-server? (Maybe some sort of library being reused, but I already have unbound and nsd running, so I don’t need that software and it will only clutter my system and possibly clash with the DNS stuff that is already there). Fontconfig? Freetype? Why should I use logrotate (yet another tool) while newsyslog works fine on macOS (and is already configured)? Etc. 

I kind of dislike getting all this software on my machine when it is not needed. I don’t know what it all does, it might open attack vectors I’m unaware of. It makes me uncertain. It increases maintenance load and risk of extra work.

When I follow the dependencies of mail-server on MacPorts.org, there is no way I can find the dependencies (e.g. follow the ‘depends on’ and nowhere you end up requiring X11. 

The following dependencies will be installed: 
 OpenBLAS
 Xft2
 apache-solr8
 bind9
 boost
 cairo
 clamav-server
 clucene
 colm
 cyrus-sasl2
 dcc
 dns-server
 fann
 fontconfig
 freetype
 fribidi
 fswatch
 gd2
 gdbm
 giflib
 gmime
 gnupg2
 gobject-introspection
 gpgme
 graphite2
 graphviz
 gts
 gzip
 harfbuzz
 hiredis
 hyperscan
 jpeg
 kerberos5
 libLASi
 libassuan
 libcomerr
 libgcc
 libgcc9
 libgcrypt
 libgpg-error
 libksba
 libmagic
 libnetpbm
 libpixman
 libpng
 libstemmer
 libunwind
 libunwind-headers
 libusb
 libusb-compat
 logrotate
 lua
 luajit
 lz4
 npth
 openldap
 ossp-uuid
 pango
 perl5
 perl5.28
 pinentry-mac
 pth
 py27-beaker
 py27-funcsigs
 py27-mako
 py27-markdown
 py27-markupsafe
 py27-setuptools
 py37-ply
 python37
 python3_select
 ragel
 readline
 redis
 rspamd
 sf-pwgen
 tcp_wrappers
 tiff
 urw-fonts
 vala
 webp
 xorg-libX11
 xorg-libXau
 xorg-libXaw
 xorg-libXdmcp
 xorg-libXext
 xorg-libXmu
 xorg-libXt
 xorg-libice
 xorg-libpthread-stubs
 xorg-libsm
 xorg-libxcb
 xorg-xcb-proto
 xorg-xcb-util
 xorg-xorgproto
 xpm
 xrender
 zstd

It is worrying me, all this stuff. It gives me the feeling my server will be not as clean as possible, but a bag of stuff.

G

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.macports.org/pipermail/macports-users/attachments/20190907/e21f71ec/attachment.html>