[Mailman-Developers] Re: way to minimize IO load with MTA supported VERP

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "JCL" == J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu> writes:

    JCL> Mailman is going to end up with a set of MTA-specific and
    JCL> internally configurable VERP configurations to chose from.

I actually don't think that MTA-directed VERPing helps us out much.
Sure, it can give us an envelope sender that we can use for better
bounce detection[*], but I think that the much more interesting
personalization is content personalization.  I.e. inserting into the
message body, footers, headers, RFC 2822 headers, etc. information
specific to the recipient.  Only Mailman knows that data and how to
interpolate it into the message body.  AFAIK, there's no way to
coordinate this with the MTA, so content personalization is always
going to be performed by Mailman.

The VERP-like approach in MM2.1 toward the envelope sender is mostly
just gravy.  (I try to be careful to describe it as VERP-like since it
isn't technically VERP.)

BTW, see VERP_REGEXP and VERP_FORMAT for how the envelope sender is
composed and parsed.

-Barry

[*] VERP helps with knowing exactly which address on which list is
bouncing, but I don't think it helps much with knowing the severity of
the bounce.