[Mailman-Developers] Build oddity when mm_cfg.py exists

[Chris Boulter]

Hi,

Here's an odd little problem I've encountered and a workaround for it.

I've seen an error message when attempting to 'make install' when
Mailman/mm_cfg.py exists within the directory where I've downloaded Mailman.
Someone else posted about this error message back in January (see
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2003-January/025466.html
) but didn't get a reply, so I'm posting this in case it's useful.

I've downloaded Mailman to
   ~mailmandeploy/mailman-2.1.2
and inside that directory I've hacked about with it, creating
   ~mailmandeploy/mailman-2.1.2/Mailman/mm_cfg.py

Now when I configure && make && make install, I get:

   Traceback (most recent call last):
     File "bin/update", line 48, in ?
       from Mailman import MailList
     File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 49, in ?
       from Mailman.Archiver import Archiver
     File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/__init__.py", line 17, in ?
       from Archiver import *
     File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/Archiver.py", line 36, in ?
       from Mailman.i18n import _
     File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/i18n.py", line 52, in ?
       set_language()
     File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/i18n.py", line 34, in set_language
       _translation = gettext.translation('mailman', mm_cfg.MESSAGES_DIR,
   AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'MESSAGES_DIR'
   make: *** [update] Error 1

The other odd thing is that even if I delete
   ~mailmandeploy/mailman-2.1.2/Mailman/mm_cfg.py
and make install again, I get the same error. It seems that something is
written into the installation directory on the first unsuccessful
installation.

I doubt if this is the normal way of working - most people would install
first then configure (and that's what I'm going to do as a workaround).
Still, if it looks like there's anything of interest in this I can play some
more and find out more detail. Here's the contents of my mm_cfg.py:

   # Are archives public or private by default?
   # 0=public, 1=private
   DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_PRIVATE = 1
   
   # Definitely don't want password reminders, since we use single sign-on
   # Nor do we want welcome messages, for the same reason
   DEFAULT_SEND_REMINDERS = 0
   DEFAULT_SEND_WELCOME_MSG = 0
   DEFAULT_SEND_GOODBYE_MSG = 0
   
   # Since archives are private, no need to obscure email addrs
   ARCHIVER_OBSCURES_EMAILADDRS = 0

Cheers,
Chris

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