The Architecture of Open Source Applications: Sendmail (2011)

aosabook.org

39 points·weinzierl··12 comments

> Some design decisions were right. Some started out right and became wrong as the world changed. Some were dubious and haven't become any less so.

Full marks to anyone who can look back and honestly say as much. I went in skimming to see if there would be discussion of the security and correctness issues that sendmail became unfortunately infamous for, and I really appreciate them being discussed at reasonable length. (And I say that without judgment; I've certainly shipped enough things that lasted long enough for me to realize the errors that I had made in their design and/or implementation.)

Tangentially related:

"The case of the 500-mile email"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708

The intro describing the history of computers and networking is really interesting to read! It was all before my time, but it truly sounds like it was the equivalent of the Wild West, with so many different architectures and standards. It must have been quite the curious experience to be in the middle of all that!

"m4 macro processor" shutters

(shudders?)

(shatters?)

(shutters, as in shuttered, a drastic method to achieve inbox zero, via declaring so-called "email bannkruptcy;" that is to say, closed for business)

I used it a couple weeks ago when I just wanted to replace a few values in a template file in an automated way. I used sed at first until the number of values involved made it awkward. I certainly didn’t want to bother with jinja or mustache etc for this trivial little case. M4 was there and handy.

But I’d rather swallow my own tongue than use it to configure Sendmail again. Postfix had many compelling features that made me want to switch to it. None were as insta-buy as comparing its configuration language to Sendmail’s.

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