From: mberg@...
Date: 2010-08-16T23:41:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Unix Philosophy in Ruby Programing



On Mon, 16 Aug 2010, Diego Bernardes wrote:

> I use Linux about 5 years, but, this year that i started to "use" linux.
> Now i understand a little more about the unix philosophy and some other
> trick things windows dont do/have.
> This changed the way i program. Ruby was build to help manage linux
> systems, rigth?
>
> So, this is the question, what you guys think about the way ruby
> programs are made?
> Why build a gem/program to send mail if you can send with sendmail?
> Why build process monitor if you can use monit?
> And so..

Why write sendmail when you could send with UUCP?  Why write monit if you 
could use Big Brother or NetSaint (now Nagios) or mon?  :)  Times change, 
needs change, tastes differ.

In the specific case of sendmail as a mailing interface, there are 
obviously the issues with portability and availability that others have 
been brought up, but it's also not a particularly flexible or well-defined 
interface for sending mail.  For example, you might have an application 
where you want verification that mail was delivered to a remote MTA rather 
than just added to the outgoing queue.

There are also a number of bugs and inconsistencies in the behaviour of
the interface as implemented by some MTAs; one in particular that bit me
is that postfix errors out if you invoke sendmail with a -t and there are 
no To headers in the message, but qmail silently ignores the flag.

Matt.