[Mailman-Developers] Welcome to our Google Summer of Code Students!

[Barry Warsaw]

On Apr 27, 2011, at 10:57 AM, Adam McGreggor wrote:

>On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 12:02:58AM -0400, Terri Oda wrote:
>> * Benedict Stein (benste on IRC) will be working to complete the GSoC  
>> work Anna did last summer on the django-based web UI for Mailman 3.0.
>
>'Complete' sounds interesting. Is that pretty achievable? I can't
>believe it's almost been a year.

(I'll definitely have to use "Time Stands Still" as a code name for an
upcoming release. :)

Remember that MM3 is re-architected to be several components: a core engine
with no ui but with a REST API so that it can be integrated with external
sites easily, a Django based web ui as the official web interface to that
engine.  So the latter makes all the same calls through REST that any other
web framework could make.

I'm hoping that the Django ui will be as complete as the current MM2 web ui
(though fast-forwarded 15 years in web technology, much more usable, and
*much* prettier :).  But I also don't think it needs to be entirely complete
in order to be releasable.  It just has to be functionally useful enough that
people can create and delete lists, manage subscriptions, configure common
options (but not the entire universe of configurability, at least for now),
and manage the admin database.  With our great mentors, our great students,
and you <wink> I think that's achievable, and I'm committed to ensure the
engine and REST API will provide what's needed.

>> * Drew Rodman will be converting pipermail to use SQL (rather than  
>> pickles) for storing data and creating an upgrade script to help users  
>> migrate their archives to the new format.  He's even hoping to get  
>> Stable URLs working by the end of the summer!
>
>Was the plan to use SQLite? Or the choices (and it should be a
>choice) of MySQL / Postgres?

My preference would be to use the Storm ORM, which is what the engine uses.
By default, that would be backed by SQLite3 since Python comes with that
support out of the box.  But it should also be possible to fairly easily
change the backend to be MySQL or PostgreSQL with the change of a database
URL.

>> * Dushyant Bansal (dushyant on IRC) will be working on the interface of  
>> the archives, integrating work from Yian and Priya's GSoC projects last  
>> summer and getting it all ready to go for Mailman 3.
>
>Nifty.
>
>> I'm really excited to have all these great projects and great students!
>
>You're not the only one.
>
>> While the students do have a set of official mentors (Barry, Florian,  
>> Anna and me), you're all encouraged to help out throughout the summer.  
>> The end goal is to have some fully integrated awesomeness, so don't be  
>> shy if you've got questions, suggestions, etc.
>
>My suggestions from last year are still pertinent ;o)
>
>    http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamamyl/4484703864/

I am a really crappy web ui designer ;), so fortunately we have great folks
like Terri and Florian to help lead those efforts.  If you like working on web
ui technologies, please do get involved.

>> If you've been lurking here wondering how to get involved with Mailman  
>> 3, now might be a great time: we've got mentors who've already set aside  
>> time to be involved this summer, and we've got students who could  
>> benefit from having more people involved in development effort over the  
>> next few months.  For example, we discovered while our students were  
>> writing patches that we don't have a great description of the Mailman 3  
>> install process, so if you want to install it and write up your  
>> experiences on the wiki (or just in a blog post we can link to!), that's  
>> a great place to start!
>
>Is it too early to start thinking about Operating System/Distro
>packagers/maintainers, for MM3?

Nope.  I've been thinking about putting together a Debian/Ubuntu package, at
least in my PPA for MM3 3.0.0a7.  If you're interested in doing that or any
other distro packaging, let's discuss on this mailing list.

Cheers,
-Barry
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