[darcs-users] Re: Darcs and a single developer working on multiple workstations

[Aaron Denney]

On 2005-03-24, Michael G Schwern <schwern at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 02:16:35AM +0000, Aaron Denney wrote:
>> Yes, SMTP is the most widespread way to send e-mail, but it's not the
>> only way.  Should darcs also handle UUCP?  
>
> That's getting a little rediculous.  It would be like arguing darcs shouldn't
> bother being an HTTP client because someone out there might want to use
> gopher.

Not really.  It's more like saying darcs shouldn't bother to be an ssh
client if it can get that functionality from another source.  We want
a system including darcs to have certain functionalities.  Often the
easiest and most flexible way to get that functionality is to put it
in the rest of the system.  Sendmail and other MTAs have a lot more
flexibility, including working behind proxies, handling sporadicaly
connected systems, etc.  Properly implementing a ful-blown SMTP client
isn't trivial, and requires more than just speaking SMTP -- we also need
a DNS client to lookup MXs, an option to retry the other servers when
one is down, a queueing mechanism so that the user can get back to work
rather than waiting for that shell to become available, etc.  Calling 
sendmail (whether it's implemented via qmail, postfix, or exim, it's the
standard interface) gets us all of that and more, for free.

-- 
Aaron Denney
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