Re: Changing the default for `send-mail-function'

[Andreas Rottmann]

Antoine Levitt <address@hidden> writes:

> 05/07/11 23:05, Richard Stallman
>>     FWIW, I almost never run make install as root for Emacs.
>>
>> That susprises me -- could you explain why not?
>
> For instance, I used to use school servers that use an antiquated
> version of emacs, and I wanted the last one, so I just reinstalled emacs
> + the libs it needed in ~/new_root, with PREFIX=$HOME/new_root
> ./configure.
>
>> Anyway, the crucial case here is a multi-user machine where the person
>> using Emacs does not understand system maintenance and did not install
>> Emacs himself.  This is the case where there is probably a functioning
>> MTA plus users who use it without knowing what it is.  In that case,
>> `make install' was run as root.
>>
>> Thus, when `make install' is run not as root, it would be ok
>> not to decide, and let Emacs ask the user whatr to do.
>>
>> The other way Emacs gets installed is from a package, via apt-get
>> or something like it.  That always gets done as root.
>>
>> Thus, we can assume this test is done running as root.
>
> Except apt-get doesn't call make install, so it's a package maintainer
> gotcha.
>
Yeah, I guess distribution maintainers for Emacs packages would get
pretty annoyed if "make install" starts to send email (and I would be,
too).  In fact, on Debian buildservers, there is commonly no network
connectivity available.  

Frankly, I think "make install" doing such things is a quite horrible
violation of user expectations (i.e. of the users that run "make
install", not those necessarily those ending up using the installed
emacs): the results of "make install" should not depend on the
circumstances under which it is run (i.e. be reproducible for a given
build).  Provide a "fancy-install" target if you must, but don't make a
"make install" run inspect its environment.

Regards, Rotty
-- 
Andreas Rottmann -- <http://rotty.yi.org/>