[Mailman-Developers] being flexible.

[Simone Piunno]

On Thursday 30 October 2003 05:17, J C Lawrence wrote:

> > ...as well as implement a bulk mailer to eliminate the need for an
> > outgoing mail server.
>
> Eeeek!  I trust this would be for immediate handoff to a "real" MTA
> versus handling final delivery directly?  Quite the Pandora's box if
> not.

I believe the best approach is to cover all options: 
 - for test installations that work out of the box (people who don't care 
   of performance, or don't care if 10% of messages gets refused 
   because of broken MTAs out there)
 - for real production installations (where admins are smart/skilled and they
   know how to plug a real MTA, a real web server, and so on.)
 - for real installations on limited platforms (e.g. on a web server which
   doesn't support proxy rules but only has CGI)
Naturally, the main underlying interface should be the "right" one, e.g. the 
one which gets the best stability and performance (plugging into a real MTA 
for sending/receiving email, proxy on a web server, etc.) and then we can 
just add some script to glue other solutions.  
Some example supposing we have built-in machinery for 
 - direct web serving
 - smtp sender
 - pop3 poller

A real installation will receive messages via pipe (like we do now) or LMTP or 
SMTP (from a real MTA fronting us) and will send them via smtpdirect to a 
real MTA (like we do now).  The web interface will be served directly but 
fronted by a real web server in reverse proxy configuration.

A real installation with a limited web server (no proxy rules) will be the 
same as above but there will be a proxy CGI that when invoked will connect to 
our internal web server (I know, this is slow, but CGI alone is slow anyway).

A real installation heavily skinned will be the same as above but the web GUI 
will be built by a 3rd party talking with mailman over XMLRPC, just to 
exchange data and commands.

A test installation (or a poor man's installation) will fetch messages from 
pop3 mailboxes (polling! I can hear you scream while you read this!) and send 
them directly to the internet (no real MTA involved) and will probably serve 
web pages directly, controlling port 80 (no real web server involved).  

Ideally there should be a wizard to choose among the available classes of 
installation, and then every other knob should be available TTW.

-- 
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