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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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