[Mailman-Developers] Creation/deletion of lists through-the-web

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 10 May 2001 15:06:35 -0400 
Barry A Warsaw <barry@digicool.com> wrote:

> I think I see what you're getting at.  Agreed, with the caveat
> that if the human operator modifies the text file and regens the
> db file, any f*ckups are outside Mailman's responsibilities to fix
> (although I'll do my best to fail gracefully).

Precisely.  Ultimately its the principle of least surprise.

What I don't want to see is:

  Mailman is so lame and broken!  Our admin just touched the alias
  file and now ___ALL___ of our Mailman lists are gone -- AND HE
  DIDN"T EVEN CHANGE ANYTHING!  Stoopid bloody software.  Mailman is
  just so braindead...

Or words to that effect.  I think we can handle things a little more
gracefully than that, both by adding a commented warning and
documentation at the top of the alias file (genned on file create
and re-added if file touched by Mailman and comments cound missing
(cf IMAP and first message)), and by attempting to be graceful
(which also means keeping backups at the filesystem level), about
all Mailman-driven alias file operations.

-- 
J C Lawrence                                       claw@kanga.nu
---------(*)                          http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
The pressure to survive and rhetoric may make strange bedfellows