Thank you Thore, Preserving 2.3, while maintained, to provide replication functionality is much appreciated. Smart move. Draft of announcement seems fine. (posted to arch-general as no reply capability to arch-dev-public) -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: News draft: dovecot >= 2.4 requires manual intervention Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2025 19:54:34 +0100 From: Thore Bödecker <foxxx0@archlinux.org> To: arch-dev-public@lists.archlinux.org Hi folks, the upstream dovecot 2.4 branch comes with handful of breaking changes, mostly concerning configuration semantics and syntax. For this, upstream provides a migration guide [1]. We've kept dovecot 2.4.1 in [testing] for quite some time and it received a decent number of signoffs. There was already a bit of chatter on arch-general regarding the availability of a dovecot 2.4 package in [extra]. While slightly unintentional, I've built and pushed todays upstream release version 2.4.2 to [extra]. However, there is a feature disparity: the 2.4 branch no longer supports replication. My own setup relies on that particular feature and I've grown quite fond of it, so I'm a bit sad to see it going away. As per upstreams EOL announcement [2], the 2.3 branch is supposedly going to receive critical secrity fixes, which I considered "maintained enough" to warrant packaging it separately until upstream fully drops it. The following packages are now available in [extra]: - dovecot23 - pigeonhole23 - dovecot23-fts-elastic - dovecot23-fts-xapian Where applicable, they are configured with the necessary conflicts/provides. The most recent dovecot-2.4.2-3 build also contains the following dovecot.install notice:
==> Dovecot 2.4 is incompatible with older configurations and requires manual intervention. ==> Refer to 'https://doc.dovecot.org/latest/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html' for upgrading instructions. ==> Alternatively, there is a dovecot23 (and pigeonhole23) package available.
Given the fact that any dovecot 2.4 binary *will not* start with a <= 2.3 configuration file, it seems reasonable for us to publish an announcement to make users aware of this situation while also informing them about the alternate 2.3 packages we provide. News draft below. ----8<---- # dovecot >= 2.4 requires manual intervention The dovecot 2.4 release branch has made breaking changes which result in it being incompatible with any <= 2.3 configuration file. Thus, the dovecot service will no longer be able to start until the configuration file was migrated, requiring manual intervention. For guidance on the 2.3-to-2.4 migration, please refer to the following upstream documentation: [Upgrading Dovecot CE from 2.3 to 2.4](https://doc.dovecot.org/latest/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html) Furthermore, the dovecot 2.4 branch no longer supports their replication feature, it was removed. For users relying on the replication feature or who are unable to perform the 2.4 migration right now, we provide alternative packages available in [extra]: - dovecot23 - pigeonhole23 - dovecot23-fts-elastic - dovecot23-fts-xapian The dovecot 2.3 release branch is going to [receive critical security fixes](https://dovecot.org/mailman3/archives/list/dovecot@dovecot.org/thread/3P45L7...) from upstream until stated otherwise. ---->8---- [1] https://doc.dovecot.org/latest/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html [2] https://dovecot.org/mailman3/archives/list/dovecot@dovecot.org/thread/3P45L7... Cheers -- Thore "foxxx0" Bödecker GPG ID: 0xEB763B4E9DB887A6 GPG FP: 051E AD6A 6155 389D 69DA 02E5 EB76 3B4E 9DB8 87A6 -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.