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diff --git a/admin/www/devs.ht b/admin/www/devs.ht new file mode 100644 index 00000000..937a6af9 --- /dev/null +++ b/admin/www/devs.ht @@ -0,0 +1,93 @@ +Title: Mailman Developer Resources +Links: +Other-links: + <h3>Developer Exits</h3> + <li><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/mailman">SourceForge Project Page</a> + <li><a href="http://www.zope.org/Members/bwarsaw/MailmanDesignNotes/">Mailman Wiki</a> + <li><a href="http://www.zope.org/Members/bwarsaw/MailmanDesignNotes/MailmanThreePointOh">Mailman 3.0 Wiki</a> + <li><a href="http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers">mailman-developers list</a> + <li><a href="http://demo.iuveno-net.de/iuveno/Products/ZMailman/">ZMailman</a> + +<h3>Developer Resources</h3> + +If you're the kind of person who loves to get elbow deep in code, +there are lots of opportunities to dig into Mailman. You may want to +find a project on our Mailman +<a href="todo.html">TODO list</a> or on the +<a href="http://www.zope.org/Members/bwarsaw/MailmanDesignNotes/">Mailman +design notes wiki</a>. Because Wikis are intended to be +collaborative, you're free to contribute to this page in true Wiki +fashion. You will also definitely want to subscribe +to the <a href="http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers" +>mailman-developers</a> mailing list. + +<h3>SourceForge Project Page</h3> + +Developers should start with the +<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/mailman">Mailman project at +SourceForge</a>. All patches and bugs should be submitted here so +they won't get lost, although it is also requested that you inform the +mailman-developers list about your submissions. + +<h3>IRC</h3> + +Some of the Mailman developers also occasionally hang out on the +<em>mailman</em> IRC channel at openprojects.net, though attendance +has been spotty lately. + +<!--table-stop--> + +<h3>Future plans</h3> + +Now that Mailman 2.1 has been released, I want to start thinking about +what will be in <a +href="http://www.zope.org/Members/bwarsaw/MailmanDesignNotes/MailmanThreePointOh">Mailman +3.0</a>. I intend to use the wiki for most design artifacts, and the +mailman-developers mailing list for most discussions. The items that +are high on my list (which is by no means complete or definitive) +include: + +<ul> +<li><b>Consolidated user database</b> -- A user should have just one +account for every mailing list they are members of at a site, and they +should be able to manage all their options through this account. +It should be possible to integrate these databases with a site's +existing user management system to reduce duplication of data and +effort. + +<p><li><b>Unified template system</b> -- Mailman has a somewhat fractured +and inconvenient templating system, using both a homegrown HTML object +model in Python and coarse templates filled in with data at rendering +time. It can be near impossible to change the look and feel of the +administration pages, and a small change to the u/i of other pages +requires updates in all supported languages. I want to use a +templating system like +<a href="http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/ZPT/">ZPT</a> or +<a href="http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/quixote/">Quixote</a>. +Actually, I plan to generalize the web interface so that many different +templating systems could be used, although we'll pick one to ship by +default. + +<p><li><b>A Real Database</b> -- Mailman uses an inefficient persistency +system based on Python pickles, and every mailing list has its own +pickled state. This has several disadvantages, including poor +scalability, difficulty in doing cross-mailing list operations, and +the virtual host limitation on list names. Mailman 3.0 will use a +real database, perhaps based on +<a href="http://www.zope.org/Wikis/ZODB/">ZODB</a> or +<a href="http://www.sleepycat.com">BerkeleyDB</a>. Again, the goal is +to generalize the interface to the backend database so that others can +be used, but choose one and ship it by default. + +<p><li><b>Component Architecture</b> -- Zope3's +<a href="http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/ComponentArchitecture/" +>component architecture</a> provides some very nice organizational +tools and software development methodologies. We'll be adopting many +of these for Mailman 3.0, which will allow us to do the kinds of +templating and database generalization described above. +</ul> + +Stephan Richter has let an effort called +<a href="http://demo.iuveno-net.de/iuveno/Products/ZMailman/" +>ZMailman</a> for integrating Zope and Mailman. I consider this a +proof of concept of some of the ideas outlined above. |