[Mailman-Developers] Pipermail

[John Viega]

Has anyone modified pipermail's hypermail emulation to work using only
modules that are compiled in the default Python distribution?  There's
one dependency I have in mind: pipermail currently uses bsddb, which
is not compiled into Python 1.5.  I think gdbm is compiled in by
default, but the two interfaces aren't compatible. 

My biggest goal w/ Mailman has always been to have everything people
would ever want to do be easy to do.  That's why I'm pretty reluctant
to distribute without built-in archiving - one thing I hated about
Majordomo was having to go out and download extras and then figure out
how to integrate them to get useful functionality.  

I also believe that many people who will want to use Mailman will be
using Python for the first time.  The default Python installation is
really easy to build.  But as soon as you tell people, "Hey, now you
have to recompile, and install crypt.  Oh, and now you have to go
download pipermail.  And before you use that, you have to find bsddbm
on the net somewhere, and install it", that's going to send people
running back to the comfort of Perl and Majordomo, even though they'll
be doing the same sorts of things.

To that end, I've put in provisions for passwords to use md5 if crypt
is not found.  BTW, do you guys think md5 should be the default, and
crypt an option for those who add it to their config?  The only real
advantage of crypt is that it is less space intensive.  Also, the way
I have things set up at the moment, if someone starts w/ the default
distribution and later recompiles Python to include crypt, all the old
passwords won't work, since they'll be in the md5 digest format.

John