[Mailman-Developers] Using mailman via an ISP

[Ross Boylan]

Because I don't have access to an always connected server I can
control, I've pursued the slightly eccentric strategy of trying to use
mailman via a dial-up ISP.  This ISP allows me to receive mail at
rbrobot+xxxx at earthlink.net for arbitrary xxx, and I've hooked up exim
on my Linux system to process it appropriately from there.  Obviously,
the web interface is usable only by me in this setup.

I'm writing for several reasons:

1. I've done this by modifying mailman to put an arbitary prefix
before the list name.  If I ever get that working adequately, would
there be interest in incorporating it into the main mailman?

I will not be offended if the answer is "No, too esoteric."  But I
thought I'd ask as long as I'm doing it.

2. If anyone has any advice along the lines of don't abuse mailman to
do this, use x instead, I'm all ears.  Even better would be sites that
would host some fairly low volume non-profit lists for free :)  (One
reason I'm looking into this is that I've been using topica, but their
registration process has become increasingly intrusive.)

3. I have a number of specific questions about the code.

a) Originally I found a few methods in MailList.py centered on
getListAddress; I thought a change here would be enough.  It's since
become clear it's not, and judging by the number of uses of
internal_name there may be a lot of code to change.

I did not want to change internal_name directly because I was hoping
to keep the undecorated name for some purposes (e.g., directory names
on disk, program's own use, some identification).  Seeing all the
uses, I'm considering changing the code at internal_name() rather than
trying to track down all the uses.  Comments?

b) I added DEFAULT_EMAIL_PREFIX to mm_config, with a default of an
empty string.  Is that an appropriate name for the variable?

c) How do I make the prefix show up in the through the web pages, and
how do I categorize it onto one of those pages?

d) Am I going to get into trouble declaring the list to be in a domain
different from the one I'm running on?  (That is, I've told the list
its DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST is earthlink.net, though my local machine is in
my own made up domain).

e) Way down the line I might worry about eliminating references to the
web site, since it's only usable by me.  Short-term I just plan to put
a welcome message saying "Don't try to use this over the web; it won't
work."  Is there any magic shortcut fixing that up?

FYI I've also noted that the VERP regexps need to be massaged to
compensate for the extra "+" in the email address.  There is probably
a clever way of quoting the prefix and incorporating it into the
regexps automatically, but for now I did it manually.