[Mailman-Developers] Re: Dates

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "JRA" == Jay R Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> writes:

    JRA> Well, and I think that's where we started.  IIRC, Barry {was
    JRA> planning, thinking about, suggesting, had already written}
    JRA> code that rewrote 1 as 2 if it was too far out of whack,
    JRA> because it was easier to fix it there codewise than splitting
    JRA> them.

    JRA> [ Checks local archive }

    JRA> If I correctly understand where clobber_date is called in the
    JRA> flow of things, that paragraph is correct.

    JRA> And therefore, not the best approach, by concensus,
    JRA> apparently.  Barry?  Have I misunderstood you?

If ARCHIVER_CLOBBER_DATE_POLICY is 1 (or 2, and the date is too far
out-of-whack), then yes, the Date: header for the copy of the message
being passed to the archiver gets munged.

IMO, the archiver ought to be doing any date clobbering, but Pipermail
is too painful to fix.  Again, what do other external archivers do?
I.e. if you passed an outrageously dated message to MHonArc, would it
dutifully put the message in the April 2006 slot?

The current approach has one hole, which would be easy to fix if it's
useful.  Mailman could mark the message with an `authoritatively
received date' using some X-* header leaving the original Date: header
alone.  Then the archiver could use that date to slot the message
regardless of what the Date: header said.

I'm not sure this is worth it though because 1) there's no standard
that I'm aware of that would let archivers and list managers/MTAs
cooperate; 2) the date Mailman would stamp the message wouldn't be
/that/ far off of the date the archiver got handed the message anyway,
so the archiver can always do whatever it wants with dates and it'll
be close enough; 3) the most recent Received: header is probably close
enough so that it could be used as the `authoritatively received date'
as has been suggested.

I think we're good enough.  If you don't like Date: header munging and
have an archiver that handles outrageous dates itself, just set
ARCHIVER_CLOBBER_DATE_POLICY to 0 and Mailman will pass the copy of
the message to the archiver unblemished.

-Barry