[Mailman-Developers] MM command prefix and-or single mm-admin CLI frontend

[Andy Buckley]

Hi,

I've been meaning to send this mail for a long time, but for one reason
or another (mostly fear of making UI suggestions for a project whose
internals I don't really know) have repeatedly managed to put it off!

It sounds trivial, but one thing that I've always regarded as a
usability problem in MM2 is the proliferation of admin command names. As
a terminal junky, a common way to learn the functionality of a
multi-purpose set of command line tools is to type their common prefix
and press tab to see what commands are available. In MM, there is no
common prefix, so this option isn't available and memory is needed to
remember the right command name... commands like 'newlist' and
'config_list' are spread higgledy-piggledy through name-space rather
than being neatly stacked in one corner. It would be great for usability
if MM3 could use admin commands with e.g. a "mm-" prefix (with
installation of backwards compatible versions maybe as an option)

An alternative approach, used most prominently by Trac, is to have a
single admin command which can either behave like a non-interactive
process or a subcommand interpreter, depending on how it is called. I
would be happy to spend some time on a mm-admin command, using the same
Python "cmd" module as trac-admin if there is the interest. This might
also involve moving some of the intelligence out of the admin scripts
and into the API, which is also good news for people like me who have a
need/desire to hook MM into a wider system management framework.

Anyway, that's the idea --- what do you think? And apologies for being
presumptuous ;)

Best wishes,
Andy

PS. I'm also interested in taking a look at MM3 templating... is this
being actively worked on or did it stall after the GSoC effort?