[Mailman-Users] Mailman archive messages(not rm, but install!)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Brad Knowles writes:

 > I've never claimed to be a Debian expert, and if they're mucking 
 > about with packages that include certain features by default in order 
 > to remove those features, then there's not much I can do to help the 
 > poor souls that are stuck with that kind of stuff.

That's not what they do.  Debian splits packages into components for
ease of maintenance of the package infrastructure.  Users are expected
to select "virtual" packages that cause a collection of components to
be installed.  By design, the package named mailman is either a
complete virtual package, or a single package that contains all of
Mailman.  A package named after the upstream package is intended to
install all of it.  It works.  The mailman package did install a
complete Mailman on several Debian systems where I use Mailman.

This is not the same as cPanel, which *does* deliberately inhibit
capabilities that Mailman admins need.  This is a situation where the
user misjudges what the bug is, and reports to the wrong channel.
It's not terribly nice of Debian to risk your time on their ability to
create robust, non-buggy virtual packages, but it is the result of
providing a service that the Mailman project does not, and should not.

This policy will occasionally result in the kind of problem we see
here.  It's a tradeoff.  You don't like it as it manifests on
Mailman-Users, and you shouldn't---all we're ever going to see here is
the bugs.  But all you need to say is "the Mailman project distributes
Mailman with the pipermail archiver included.  If you don't have it,
it is a packaging issue.  Your vendor Debian needs to know about it,
and you need to get support from them."

In sum, I think you are doing the Mailman project a disservice by
denigrating Debian.  If they're really doing their users such a
disservice, you (or somebody from Mailman who understands the issues)
should report it as a bug.  In my experience the various distros,
including Debian, are responsive to upstream maintainers.

Regards,