Re: [Mailman-Developers] MM1.0b9 Bug! (was: Setup prob: abs/rel CGI url)
[Christian Tismer]
Harald Meland wrote:
[Christian Tismer]
Hi Barry et al,
I found it - Mailman 1.0b9 has a bug in admin.py .
Which was fixed _days_ ago in CVS :-)
That's great. An average user will step into this trap, since 1.0b9 is the current version. If one always has to check CVS, it makes no sense to publish the zip file at all.
On the contrary. Releasing betas are _part of_ testing new software.
Please understand that I'm not saying that I don't appreciate you tracking down bugs in Mailman betas -- because I do, really -- but I thought it appropriate to respond and say that you could get a better fix for your problem from CVS.
I have to say: 10.b9 was published without proper testing.
That depends on what you mean by "proper testing". If "proper testing" means compiling with all available of the hordes of different compilers available on lots and lots of OSes with all combinations of "configure" options, and then doing test runs of all parts of Mailman with all combinations of web servers, MTAs, Python releases, and whatnot, there is _no way_ we will get 1.0 out before the end of the century.
The core developers _do_ typically check that changes they make appear to work right before they check them in -- but occasionally a bug slips through.
Anyway, the "/mailman/anything" strings are a little spread around in the sources. In my opinion, it would be safer to keep them in a central place (Defaults.py maybe) and just use references.
If you have a closer look at the places where /mailman/foobar are
"spread around", I think you will see that they are usually fallbacks
that are only used when the appropriate ways of getting at stuff
doesn't work -- in particular, see the mm_cfg.py variables
DEFAULT_URL' and PRIVATE_ARCHIVE_URL'.
In the cases where /mailman/foobar are used as hardcoded values without any defaults, that is very likely a bug which should be fixed.
Cheers,
Harald
Harald Meland wrote:
[Christian Tismer]
Harald Meland wrote:
[Christian Tismer]
Hi Barry et al,
I found it - Mailman 1.0b9 has a bug in admin.py .
Which was fixed _days_ ago in CVS :-)
That's great. An average user will step into this trap, since 1.0b9 is the current version. If one always has to check CVS, it makes no sense to publish the zip file at all.
On the contrary. Releasing betas are _part of_ testing new software.
Please understand that I'm not saying that I don't appreciate you tracking down bugs in Mailman betas -- because I do, really -- but I thought it appropriate to respond and say that you could get a better fix for your problem from CVS.
I had been using 1.0b7 with success. 1.0b9 introduced a bug which caused me some trouble, and I wasn't sure where to look: Did it depend of the slightly different machine, the older Python version, or mailman?
I have to say: 10.b9 was published without proper testing.
That depends on what you mean by "proper testing". If "proper testing" means compiling with all available of the hordes of different compilers available on lots and lots of OSes with all combinations of "configure" options, and then doing test runs of all parts of Mailman with all combinations of web servers, MTAs, Python releases, and whatnot, there is _no way_ we will get 1.0 out before the end of the century.
I am just saying that the changes, which affected my config unfortunately, were not tested against a machine which would use them.
Besides that, I have seen some changes to some scripts which were obviously wrong and made it into the next release. Example: A number of scripts have this path hack (bin/newlist for instance), and for an older Python 1.5, a try..execpt for getpass was introduced. Nice idea, but doing this before the "import path" makes no sense, since Mailman.pythonlib isn't available before that import. I think, changes like this make it into the dist too quickly. Polite speaking is "without proper testing", my company would yell "thoughtless" at me. :c)
The core developers _do_ typically check that changes they make appear to work right before they check them in -- but occasionally a bug slips through.
Well, you say that bug was fixed, see CVS. This means, someone fixed a bug, put it into CVS, and knew that this bug is in the b9 zip file, but... did I miss something, or was there a note on the download page that one might need a patch to get it running?
I didn't want to do testing, but get the latest "stable" version and assumed that was 1.0b9 . Instead, I spent hours of figuring out known things, although I was in trouble (had just lost my old installation and needed a new one ASAP for customers).
Anyway, the "/mailman/anything" strings are a little spread around in the sources. In my opinion, it would be safer to keep them in a central place (Defaults.py maybe) and just use references.
If you have a closer look at the places where /mailman/foobar are "spread around", I think you will see that they are usually fallbacks that are only used when the appropriate ways of getting at stuff doesn't work -- in particular, see the mm_cfg.py variables
DEFAULT_URL' andPRIVATE_ARCHIVE_URL'.
Right, there are just a few places. Anyway I think it would be cleaner to remove every repetition of a fallback, default or whatever into one central place. This was not meant as crisicism, just a hint. If, for instance, the "/mailman/admin" etc. fallbacks were in one place, a typo from future changes would either not occour, or show up in a more obvious way.
Be assured, I like Mailman and used it from the first days. I'm also telling everybody to use it. At the same time, whenever I want to install it, I get into some trouble. Usually I can help myself, but what about other users who just want to follow the instructions and run it?
I think it would be better for MM's public acceptance if there was always a version known to be used in many installations. It would not have all new features, but also not the new bugs. In other words: If the latest beta needed a bug fix, why don't we mark it as problematic and go back to, say, 1.0b7?
cheers - chris
-- Christian Tismer :^) <mailto:tismer@appliedbiometrics.com> Applied Biometrics GmbH : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101 : *Starship* http://starship.python.net 10553 Berlin : PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net PGP Fingerprint E182 71C7 1A9D 66E9 9D15 D3CC D4D7 93E2 1FAE F6DF we're tired of banana software - shipped green, ripens at home
participants (2)
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Christian Tismer -
Harald Meland