[bug#43347] [PATCH] services: dovecot: Do not require dovecot to be globally installed.

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice via Guix-patches via <guix-patches@gnu.org>]

Pierre,

Thank you very much for the bug report.

On 2020-09-11 21:40, Pierre Langlois wrote:
> I noticed recently my little dovecot mailserver failed to boot, I
> tracked it down to our service installing a symlink as:
> 
>   /etc/dovecot/modules -> /run/current-system/profile/lib/dovecot
> 
> However, I didn't have the dovecot package globally installed, the
> service does not install it AFAICT.

Sorry, this is my fault.  I've been slowly merging some Dovecot 
improvements[0] into master.

While I'm happily replying from the latest Dovecot service, I run it in 
an... idiosyncratic manner that had me write some glue code to test 
these patches.  I didn't realize that said glue was doing more work than 
I, er, realized.  Too much.

> We could extend the service to install dovecot into the global profile,
> however instead we can just symlink /etc/dovecot/modules to the dovecot
> package in the store directly.

Nack.  That just reverts to last week's monolithic Dovecot service that 
doesn't support modules, but now with pointless indirection via /etc.  
Nor should the service add anything to the system profile, or expect the 
user to do so.

The fix is to add a ‘modules’ field to the service configuration that, 
exactly like CUPS's ‘extensions’ field, adds module packages like 
dovecot-pigeonhole to the union directory that /etc/dovecot/modules 
points to.

Kind regards,

T G-R

Sent from a Web browser. Excuse or enjoy my brevity.

[0]: https://issues.guix.gnu.org/42899