Re: [siesta-dev] sympa vs siesta

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From: Richard Clamp
Subject: Re: [siesta-dev] sympa vs siesta
Date: 23:15 on 07 May 2003
On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 10:21:49PM +0100, nick@xxxx.xxx wrote:
> Arthur sent a URL for a mailing list manager called sympa written in perl:
> 
> http://www.sympa.org/features.html

He mentioned it on irc the other day (2003-04-28), and this is what
was said back then.

13:41 <@sky> what is siestas benifit over sympa?
13:42 <@richardc> not a clue
13:44 <@richardc> we have a less gay name?  SYsteme de Multi-Postage Automatique indeed
13:44 <@blech> sympa.org?
13:45 <@richardc> blarg.  http://listes.cru.fr/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/sympa/src/List.pm?rev=1.374&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup
13:45 <@richardc> it says List on the tin, but seems to be a database layer
13:46 <@richardc> we're less finished, so we have more vapourware than they do
13:52 <@richardc> oh, and we don't have a core file checked into our cvs tree
13:52 <@richardc> http://listes.cru.fr/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/sympa/src/.core.swp
13:52  * blech sniggers.
13:52 <@sky> :)
13:54 <@richardc> but that was the first I've looked at it.  and I've only looked at mailman as a subscriber/sysadmin before, so it's entirely logical that I should start a project to make a new MLM :)
13:55 <@blech> I wonder if it's obscure because it's French.
13:55 <@richardc> oh, I opened the box on majordomo before now too

Paul then also brought up MojoMail.

13:56  * blech throws http://mojo.skazat.com/features/ in as well, while we're mentioning other perl mlms.
13:58 <@richardc> urg. it seems to be repeatedly reloading
13:58 <@richardc> certainly it made my browser flicker
13:59 <@blech> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=13002 # sf thing. CVS seems to be empty though.
13:59 <@blech> Oh, it has a logo animation in Flash. I'm sure siesta won't have one of those.
14:00 <@richardc> I dunno but the name "Mojofied FormMail" fills me with dread
14:02 <@blech> 'Mojo Mail can also be set up to use an SQL backend to save its list information.This has the benifit of being enterprise-level bulletproof.'
14:03 <@blech> Interesting phrasing.
14:03 <@richardc> but I only have silver bullets

And after that it seemed to die.

> Sort of a rhetorical question, but why are we (er not me mostly) writing
> siesta? It feels like re-inventing the wheel given what sympa can already
> do (some things on that page)

Well why reinvent any wheel?

Let's take another of our wheels for a second, Mariachi.  Now there's
a fairly crowded space as it is; pipermail, MHonarc, Hypermail,
Lurker, and Zest, to name but the ones Simon has stuck in the list of
alternatives[0].

Here are the features that sell Mariachi to me:
   Templates are in TT.
   Uses jwzs threading algorithm.
   I can follow (most of) the code.
   Copes with maildirs and mboxes without pain and/or trickery.

Now let's skim over that I follow the code because I did a fair chunk,
and compare that to MHonarc (all the rest are written in python, apart
from Hypermail which is some seriously fast C)

   Weird all-in-one templating system[2].

   http://savannah.nongnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/mhonarc/mhonarc/MHonArc/lib/mhthread.pl?rev=2.11&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup
   Might work, but it's not full-on jwz anal

   http://savannah.nongnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/mhonarc/mhonarc/MHonArc/
   C<require 'mhamain.pl'> doesn't inspire confidence in me.

   Does maildirs with some trickery, and then it chokes on the
   unquoted From_ lines it finds in there.

Oh, and I found MHonarc to be quite slow, about half the speed of
Mariachi for doing full regens of the siesta lists.

In MHonarcs favour it's much more configurable than Mariachi, has
few/no external module prereqs[1], and is already known and in use.

>     Fast distribution process & Load control.
>     Tuning of maximum number of SMTP sessions.
>     Sorting of recepients before distribution.

I think those are up to the MTA, which is why right now we just invoke
a sendmail binary.  There's also scope for someone to come along and
write Siesta::Send::CleverUseOfSMTP.

>     Compatible with most SMTP engine (sendmail, qmail or postfix).

Isn't that just saying "can be driven from /etc/aliases"?

>     Detailed logs.

Well either the MTA can do that,
> 
> ...
> 
>     Per list Configuration.
> 
> ...
> 
> 
> Superficially it feels like "Not Invented Here" is the main reason that siesta
> is being written, given that sympa and majorodomo 2 are both "perl not python"

That and the before admitted complete unawareness of sympa (though
when I did become aware of it I was unwowed).  I've never looked at
the code for majordomo 2, but after looking at the original I'm not
really compelled to either.

> However, I suspect I'm forgetting that the biggest itch that siesta intends
> to scratch - per user Reply-To munging. Is that correct?

That's some peoples biggest itch.  There are a whole bunch of itches
that we initially balanced.  There's the per-user munging itch, the
easy to write plugins itch, the stopping london.pm from saying "why
isn't there a perl MLM" (and it's cousins, "one which is OO and
clean", and "one which has separated templates") itch, and of course
the because it's there itch.

I still don't know if any of those, or all combined, are sufficiently
ill-addressed by other MLM solutions to make it worth us having
siesta.  People might want to look down the list that Simon put
together about the alternatives[0], and pick one of those instead.


[0] http://siesta.unixbeard.net/svn/trunk/ALTERNATIVES

[1] I'm gambling that having a CPAN distribution heals that particular ill.

[2] The rest being in python makes me assume they'll all have their
own NiH templating systems too, which makes me cringe.

-- 
Richard Clamp <richardc@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>

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