[Mailman-Developers] Re: Config.db

David Champion dgc@uchicago.edu
Fri, 30 Jun 2000 14:31:55 -0500


On 2000.06.30, in <14684.61773.275647.868844@anthem.concentric.net>,
	"Barry A. Warsaw" <bwarsaw@beopen.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm not exactly sure why you want such conversion tools.  It's very

Hypothetical example: when people fill out the form to request a
mailing list, they check off boxes for the initial configuration of the
list, and we generate the list in that configuration.

Or: it's the end of an academic year, and we've just closed 6,000
accounts.  We want to either rewrite subscriptions with people's new
alumni addresses, or remove them from the list.  (The latter's not
a big problem, I know.)

Or: again, it's the end of a year, and we've just closed 40 accounts
which own mailing lists.  We need to lock the lists pending resolution
of new ownership, because our EAUP prohibits services which don't have
accounts-eligible sponsors.

Is that convincing?

> easy to write a little Python script to hack on or inspect config.db
> (see bin/dumpdb),

Yes, but it's easier if I don't need to learn Python first (and do it
in a language that I'm going to use for other, related tasks).  None
of my administrative tools written in C, Perl or shell require
integration with (correspondingly) C, Perl, or shell.  Why should my
Python software require irt with Python?

> Suffice to say that /eventually/ config.db will go away because all
> this information will live in a real database.

That's good, too, if the database isn't required to be SQL or
something.  I think JC said that it was to be pretty open, though.

-- 
 -D.	dgc@uchicago.edu	NSIT	University of Chicago