[Mailman-Users] umbrella_list?

[Shane Beasley]

On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Jon Carnes wrote:

> On Wednesday 17 October 2001 02:13, Shane Beasley wrote:
> > On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Jon Carnes wrote:
> > > To stop folks from receiving multiple copies, you will have to make
> > > your own mega-list by using a script and building the mega-list from
> > > each of the sub lists.
> >
> > Not to be outdone, I came up with a one-liner that will add all
> > subscribers of foo_* to the umbrella list foo_all:
> >
> >  list_lists | awk '{ print $1 }' | grep -i ^foo_ | grep -iv foo_all | \
> >  xargs -rl list_members | sync_members -f - -w=no foo_all
> >
> Humbly I must decree that *you* are the superior coder!  I had not thought 
> to use awk!  :-)

And xargs. And this is why I went to college. Hmm...

> BTW: If anyone wants to rewrite that in python, then I'm sure we could
> get the developers of Mailman to include a new option that uses an
> autogenerated list (generated from your code).  Feel like being
> immortalized today?

As you mention this, I land upon a patch:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-developers/2001-September/009527.html

<snip>

Provides functionality/behaviour similar to how sendmail treats its
aliases file. eg

	alias1: alias2, alias3, alias4
	alias2: a, b
	alias3: b, c
	alias4: c, d

would only deliver one message to the union of alias2, alias3 and alias4
which is a, b, c, d

</snip>

Sounds like what we want, eh?

Two problems:

 - it's a patch for 2.1a (yes, that's "a" as in "alpha")

 - I know jack about Python and couldn't possibly smash it into 2.0.6
without a *lot* of free time, not to mention that it is claimed to rely on
a class hierarchy (MemberAdaptor) that doesn't exist in 2.0

If anybody's up for *that*, it would probably be better than working from
scratch. Perhaps one day I'll get bored and learn Python or something.
However, by that time, 2.1 won't be alpha anymore, and we'll all go back
to reminiscing about the good old days, when you had to create your
umbrella lists yourself, in the snow, uphill both ways.

In any event, best of luck to ye.

- Shane