Headsup on feature removal

[Michael Peddemors]

With these planned changes, you mention they will be removed from 
'core', so is the intention to allow more of these legacy plugins to 
more to their own repo's for those that might still want to use them?

Eg, more in the the path of plug-in architecture? Just curious for 
clarity.

Oh, and have to add.. still waiting on the variable capability patch, to 
allow plugins to modify advertised capabilities.  (#pull request 86)

This will allow us to provide our dove cot plugins more widely to the 
community.



On 2020-03-16 11:50 p.m., Aki Tuomi wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Dovecot is now a nearly 20 year old product, and during that time it has accumulated many different features and plugins in its core repository.
> 
> We are starting to gradually remove some of these parts, which are unused, untested or deprecated.
> We will provide advance notification before removing anything.
> 
> To start, the following features are likely to be removed in next few releases of Dovecot.
> 
>   - Authentication drivers: vpopmail, checkpassword, bsdauth, shadow, sia
>   - Password schemes: HMAC-MD5, RPA, SKEY, PLAIN-MD4, LANMAN, NTLM, SMD5
>   - Authentication mechanisms: ntlm, rpa, skey
>   - Dict drivers: memcached, memcached-ascii (use redis instead)
>   - postfix postmap support
>   - autocreate & autosubscribe plugins (use built-in auto=create/subscribe setting instead)
>   - expire plugin (use built-in autoexpunge setting)
>   - fts-squat plugin
>   - mailbox alias plugin
>   - mail-filter plugin
>   - snarf plugin
>   - xz compression algorithm
> 
> For the authentication drivers that are being removed, we suggest using Lua as a replacement. See
> https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/authentication/lua_based_authentication/
> 
> For information about converting between password schemes, see
> https://wiki2.dovecot.org/HowTo/ConvertPasswordSchemes
> 
> If you are using any of these features, please start preparing for their removal in the near
> future. Features will begin to be dropped as of v2.3.11.
> 
> Additionally, the mbox format will no longer receive new development. It will still be
> maintained, however its use beyond migrations and other limited use cases will be discouraged.
> 
> Please contact us via the mailing list if you have any questions.
> 
> Regards,
> Dovecot Team
> 



-- 
"Catch the Magic of Linux..."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Peddemors, President/CEO LinuxMagic Inc.
Visit us at http://www.linuxmagic.com @linuxmagic
A Wizard IT Company - For More Info http://www.wizard.ca
"LinuxMagic" a Registered TradeMark of Wizard Tower TechnoServices Ltd.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
604-682-0300 Beautiful British Columbia, Canada

This email and any electronic data contained are confidential and intended
solely for the use of the individual or entity to which they are addressed.
Please note that any views or opinions presented in this email are solely
those of the author and are not intended to represent those of the company.