ikiwiki/doc/todo/passwordauth:_sendmail_interface.mdwn

[[!tag wishlist plugins/passwordauth]]

For sending out password reminder emails, the [[plugins/passwordauth]] plugin currently uses
the *[Mail::Sendmail](http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Mail::Sendmail)* module.
This module, however, has the limitation that it can only talk *SMPT*,
but can't use the standard Unix *sendmail* (command-line) interface.
I don't want to have an MTA with a SMTPd running on my web server system.
Would it be possible to switch to using one of the existing Perl modules that support
the *sendmail* interface?

From doing a quick search, these might be some candidates:

  * <http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Mail::Transport::Sendmail>
  * <http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Email::Send::Sendmail>
  * <http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Mail::SendVarious>
  * <http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?EasyMail>

None of them are packaged for Debian so far, but that should be doable easily, as far as I know.

ikiwiki might perhaps even try to use all of them in turn until it finds a working one.

I'd offer to work on a patch for the [[plugins/passwordauth]] plugin and other places
in the ikiwiki source code, where emailing is done.

--[[tschwinge]]

> One that is in Debian is [[!cpan Email::Send]], which can do SMTP and
> sendmail and some other methods and falls back through methods until one
> succeeds. I haven't tried to use it but it looks like a feasable
> candidate.
> 
> I don't much like the idea of supporting a lot of different email sending
> modules.  --[[Joey]]

OK, so I'll have a look at replacing all email handling with *Email::Send*.

[[!tag patch]]
*<http://schwinge.homeip.net/~thomas/tmp/ikiwiki-sendmail.patch>*

Remaining TODOs:

  * Resolve TODOs as denoted inside the patch.
  * Is it worthwhile to use and depend on [[!cpan Return::Value]]
    just for this bit of functionality?
  * Debian news file.
  * ikiwiki news file.

--[[tschwinge]]


> BTW, I think you recently sent a patch improving mail logging, but I've
> lost it. --[[Joey]]

Resent.  --[[tschwinge]]

> Debian now has Mail::Sender, Mail::SendEasy, and Email::Sender
> (which, according to its dpkg description, "replaces the old and sometimes
> problematic Email::Send library, which did a decent job at handling very
> simple email sending tasks, but was not suitable for serious use, for a
> variety of reasons"). Are any of those any better? It's unfortunate that
> there doesn't seem to be a clear "best practice"... --[[smcv]]