[Mailman-Developers] ANNOUNCE Mailman 2.1 alpha 1

[Barry A. Warsaw]

I've just uploaded a snapshot tarball of Mailman 2.1 alpha 1 to
SourceForge.  I'm only announcing it here because if you're not on
mailman-developers, you probably shouldn't be trying to install this.

This release is intended as a snapshot of several big changes to
Mailman, specifically the rewritten qrunner subsystem, and
internationalization support.

Only motivated developers should consider using this release as I make
no guarantees for stability or even installability.  APIs may change.
Stuff may not work.  It might be a PITA to install.  Still, it would
be cool if people wanting i18n would pull this release down and play
with it.  I'm interested in any feedback or experiences you might
have.  I'll be at the Python conference all week so if you're coming,
I'd love to talk about it, otherwise don't expect any responses until
I get back.

I strongly recommend you do not use this release for production
systems (if you even can :).

This release also contains the important bug fixes from Mailman 2.0.1
and 2.0.2.

You can get the tarball from the Mailman SourceForge pages:

    http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=103

You will need Python 2.0 or better, and my mimelib 0.2 package or
better.

    http://www.python.org/2.0
    http://barry.wooz.org/software/Code/mimelib-0.2.tar.gz

Enjoy,
-Barry

2.1 alpha 1 (04-Mar-2001)

    - Python 2.0 or newer required.  Also required is `mimelib' a new
      library for handling MIME documents.  This will be bundled in
      future releases, but for now, you must download and install it
      (using Python's distutils) from

      http://barry.wooz.org/software/Code/mimelib-0.2.tar.gz

      You need mimelib 0.2 or better.

    - Redesigned qrunner subsystem.  Now there are multiple message
      queues, and considerable flexibility in file formats for
      integration with external systems.  The current crop of queues
      include:

      archive -- for posting messages to an archiver
      commands -- for incoming email commands and bounces
      in -- for list-destined incoming email
      news -- for messages outgoing to a nntp server
      out -- for messages outgoing to a smtp server
      shunt -- for messages that trigger unexpected exceptions in Mailman
      virgin -- for messages that are generated by Mailman

      cron/qrunner is now a long running script that forks off
      sub-runners for each of the above queues.  qrunner still plays
      nice with cron, but it is expected to be started by init at some
      point in the future.  Some support exists for parallel
      processing of messages in the queues.

    - Support for internationalization support merged in.  Original
      work done by Juan Carlos Rey Anaya and Victoriano Giralt.  I've
      tested about 90% of the web side, 50% of the email, and 50% of
      the command line / cron scripts.

      New scripts: bin/newlang, bin/rmlang

    - New delivery script `auto' for automatic integration with the
      Postfix MTA.

    - A bunch of new bounce detectors.

    Changes ported from Mailman 2.0.2 and 2.0.1:

    - A fix for a potential privacy exploit where a clever list
      administrator could gain access to user passwords.  This doesn't
      allow them to do much more harm to the user then they normally
      could, but they still shouldn't have access to the passwords.

    - In the admindb page, don't complain when approving a
      subscription of someone who's already on the list (SF bug
      #222409 - Thomas Wouters).

      Also, quote for HTML the Subject: text printed for held
      messages, otherwise messages with e.g. "Subject: </table>" could
      royally screw page formatting.

    - Docstring fix bin/newlist to remove mention of "immediate"
      argument (Thomas Wouters).

    - Fix for bin/update when PREFIX != VAR_PREFIX (SF bug #229794 --
      Thomas Wouters).

    - Bug fix release, namely fixes a buglet in bin/withlist affecting
      the -l and -r flags; also a problem that can cause qrunner to
      stop processing mail after disk-full events (SourceForge bug
      127199).