#1100700 exim4 uses a mix of tabs and spaces within individual lines

Package:
exim4
Source:
exim4
Submitter:
Ben Raven
Date:
2025-03-20 09:39:04 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1100700#5
Date:
2025-03-17 15:00:21 UTC
From:
To:
The version of exim4 installed with apt contains 20 lines that begin with a
tab character followed by one or more spaces. This breaks alignment in text
editors when using a tab size other than 8 and makes line by line file
manipulation trickier. Replacing all tabs with eight spaces fixes this.

The Debian exim4 repo contains around a thousand lines with a tab character
followed by at least one space, so I haven't been able to track down the
source of this. I believe these tabs are also all standing in for eight
spaces.

Ben Raven
#1100700#10
Date:
2025-03-17 17:35:25 UTC
From:
To:
Control: severity -1 wishlist
[...]

Hello,

are you talking about the sourcecode or some specific file in a binary
package?

If this is about the source code then I think this is the wrong place to
discuss this, since we are not going to reformat the upstream source in
Debian.

cu Andreas
#1100700#17
Date:
2025-03-20 09:20:36 UTC
From:
To:
Hey Andreas,

For example, on a fresh exim4 install:

root@ben-test-2:/# cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"
root@ben-test-2:/# exim4 --version | grep "Exim version"
Exim version 4.96 #2 built 28-Sep-2024 14:49:26
root@ben-test-2:/# grep -nPR /etc/exim4 -e "^\t "
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template:2120:            }\
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template:2121:            {\\N[\\^]\\N}\
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template:2122:            {^^}\
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template:2123:        }
/etc/exim4/conf.d/auth/30_exim4-config_examples:244:            }\
/etc/exim4/conf.d/auth/30_exim4-config_examples:245:
 {\\N[\\^]\\N}\
/etc/exim4/conf.d/auth/30_exim4-config_examples:246:            {^^}\
/etc/exim4/conf.d/auth/30_exim4-config_examples:247:        }

I'm not seeing these files in the exim upstream source code (
https://github.com/Exim/exim), but they are in the Debian exim4 source code
(https://salsa.debian.org/exim-team/exim4), which also contains many more
lines beginning with a tab followed by spaces. Apologies if this isn't the
right place to be reporting this; if so, where would be?

Ben
#1100700#22
Date:
2025-03-20 09:35:39 UTC
From:
To:
These are all dpkg-conffiles. Doing those changes for cosmetic reasons
will trigger conffile change prompts on thousands of systems. I'd
recommend not doing this until those files need changes for non-cosmetic
reasons, where it is appropriate to piggyback cosmetics on them as well.

The exim upstream sources contain an src/configure.default. I think most
of our exim4.conf.template is generated from patching this file.

Greetings
Marc