[Mailman-Users] MM 2.1.3 version Mailman-htdig integration patches available

[Richard Barrett]

On Wednesday, October 1, 2003, at 07:22  am, Gour wrote:

> Richard Barrett (r.barrett at openinfo.co.uk) wrote:
>
>> I have uploaded updated files to sourceforge for the following patches
>> and bugs I maintain, which include my Mailman-HTdig integration
>> patches. You can  reach them through:
>
> Is there any chance for these patches to become integrated in the 
> official
> distribution.
>

A perfectly reasonable question.

> We are just configuring one server which runs Gentoo and it is a pain 
> to
> always manually patch Mailman, instead of plain "emerge".
>

It is pain for me too, as the author and maintainer of these patches, 
particularly #444879 and #444884. I have to retest and, if necessary, 
rework and again retest them against each new MM release. Yes, I would 
have to do some of this work as I use the patches on systems I manage 
but the time and effort to try an deliver a trouble free and documented 
patch to a wider community arguably doubles the effort I expend.

As I write, the sourceforge page for patch #444884 appears to be broken 
(again), probably because the number of files associated with the patch 
has hit some PHP limit when rendering the page - that was the problem 
the last time this occurred.

All these files have accumulated to cater for the numerous releases of 
MM since I first developed the patch (and some fixing of my bugs 
introduced by my patched code). But I do not have the necessary 
privileges to delete the older, obsolete files from sourceforge.

But the real problem is that no consensus has been reached on 
committing Mailman to use of the HTdig search engine for archive 
search. With posts to mailman-users and mailman-developers lists by 
some subscribers that express negative views about HTdig, this 
consensus is not likely to be reached. Also, I believe the main MM 
developers are not keen on bundling HTdig with MM or tying MM too 
tightly to HTdig.

I have a half completed rework of the #444884 patch to make it more of 
a "search framework", so that a variety of search engines could be 
plugged in more readily, but finding the time and effort to complete 
this is a problem for me. And, if I am honest, I doubt that even this 
would be admitted to the core MM code before MM 3. Take patch #444879, 
which has been entirely search engine agnostic and configured to do 
nothing be default for some considerable time, and that has not been 
accepted into the CVS. To cap it all, MM 3 is supposed to get a better 
built-in archiver (than the current pipermail implementation) 
incorporating built-in search; so why waste my time and effort on 
figuring out enhanced changes to obsolescent code.

Others must speak to their view but I doubt you will see this problem 
resolved before MM 3.

> Sincerely,
> Gour
>
> -- 
> Gour
> gour at mail.inet.hr
> Registered Linux User #278493
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Richard Barrett                               http://www.openinfo.co.uk