[Mailman-Developers] a more uniform interface to private and public archives

[Todd Pfaff]

for mailman-1.1, the installation documentation suggests to create, for
example, an 'Alias' path for the web server to the mailman public archives
and a 'ScriptAlias' cgi-bin path to the private archives.

what i'd like to suggest is that we make the interface more uniform by
eliminating the 'Alias' path and access both private and public archives
via a single cgi-bin interface.  if the archive is private we require
authentication, if not we simply bypass the authentication.

i've done this with my mailman installation by doing the following:

- created a new version of the MailMan/Cgi/private.py program
- in mm_cfg.py, set
PUBLIC_ARCHIVE_URL = '/mailman/private'
PRIVATE_ARCHIVE_URL = '/mailman/private'
- these could then be collapsed into one ARCHIVE_URL
- we could also replace 
PUBLIC_ARCHIVE_FILE_DIR         = os.path.join(PREFIX, 'archives/public')
PRIVATE_ARCHIVE_FILE_DIR        = os.path.join(PREFIX, 'archives/private')
with one ARCHIVE_FILE_DIR, and we could also get rid of the public and
private subdirectories altogether.

in the new private.py i check listobj.archive_private and if it's set
to 1 i do the usual private authentication as before.  if it's not 1, i
set is_auth to 1 and fall through.  that's it.  very clean and simple.

does anyone see any problems with this?  i think it certainly makes things
more clear and straightforward.

--
Todd Pfaff                         \  Email: pfaff@mcmaster.ca
Computing and Information Services  \ Voice: (905) 525-9140 x22920
ABB 132                              \  FAX: (905) 528-3773
McMaster University                   \
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada  L8S 4M1     \