[Mailman-Developers] Idea

John Viega viega@list.org
Sat, 13 Jun 1998 23:46:48 -0700


On Sun, Jun 14, 1998 at 02:33:14AM -0400, Corbett J. Klempay wrote:
> 
> Hmmm...any good ballpark figures for this?  I'm thinking that BUGTRAQ is
> maybe one of the heavier I'm on, or perhaps the AfterStep or CVS lists.
> So let's say ~10 messages a day, so ~70/week, ~300 month, 3000-4000 year.
> That's a lot of messages :)  I wonder how large of a time span they should
> be able to search...

I've seen some lists that averaged twice that, probably.  Figure on
there being some bigger lists, but then again, no one wants to get TOO
many messages a day.

> > > - What kind of structure does Pipermail store the archive in?  
> > 
> > This is the biggest problem right now.  Andrew says you can plug in
> > any sort of back-end you want for a database, as long as it can handle
> > a tree-type structure.  Unfortunately, the only such backend
> > implemented is not portable.  Everything needs to work out of the box
> > w/ a vanilla Python installation.  I was thinking that someone could
> > write a backend that uses the file system for that tree structure...
> >
> 
> Ugh. (the non-portable current state of things)  What is it using now?

I think bsddb or something like that.  My biggest concern is having
Mailman work "out of the box" for everybody.  People needing to to
install bsddb isn't acceptable...

John