[Mailman-Developers] A couple of archiving questions

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Andrew Stuart writes:

 > Can anyone point me in the direction of a good explanation of how
 > archiving works?

There isn't one.  Mailman core doesn't define an archiving function
and current opinion is that it shouldn't.  It just defines an
interface for attaching the archiver or archivers you prefer to the
system.

The main reason there actually *is* a defined interface is so that
core can provide the permalink for use in a header field.  Otherwise
integrating an archiver is trivial (on the Mailman core side) and
archiver-specific.

 > Is there any reason why it should not be possible to be able to
 > pull messages scheduled for archiving out through the REST API as
 > file attachments?

Sure.  There's no reason to suppose that the messages are available to
the REST API.  One popular scheme involves subscribing a list-specific
address at mail-archive.com, which is a third-party service.  The
messages come in, the messages go out, and they leave no trace of
content behind, just log entries.