[Mailman-Developers] WN Web server support

[Roy C. Bixler]

Hi:

I have just successfully installed Mailman 2.0b4 but, from what I can
tell, there is no support for the WN Web server (for those unfamiliar,
more info. on it can be found at "http://hopf.math.nwu.edu" or
"http://www.wnserver.org").  Has anyone done this?

If, as I suspect, no one has tackled this yet, I don't think it would be
very hard.  What makes WN different from other Web servers is that it
requires a database (an 'index.cache' file) in each directory enumerating
which files can be served.  This poses a problem for the archive
directories where 'index.cache' has to be updated each time a posting is
added to the archive.  A quick and dirty way to do this is with a 'wndex
-a' command (i.e. creates an 'index.cache' file which gives permission for
all current files in this directory to be served) executed from a 'cron'
job. Even better, could this be done in Mailman/Archive/HyperArch.py?  
The last line of the HyperArch::Write_TOC() method would be:

os.system("wndex -a -d " + self.basedir)

('-d' argument specifies directory to create 'index.cache' file.)

Comments?  (Yes, I know I could take the easy way out and change my Web
server, but WN support in Mailman would interest others as well.)

Thanks,

-- 
Roy Bixler
The University of Chicago Press
rcb@press-gopher.uchicago.edu