[Mailman-Developers] Requirements for a new archiver

[Barry Warsaw]

On Mon, 2003-10-27 at 17:08, PieterB wrote:

> Also have a look at the "SMART Archiver" project,
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartarchiver/
> 
> 	A replacement for the standard GNU Mailman archiver that
> 	supports attachments, searching, date selection, message
> 	editing and more, requires a database such as postgressql
> 	(mysql support is coming in a future version)

I didn't know about that one!

FWIW, I think all this competition in replacement archives is a good
thing.  What I really want though, is a standard interface/API/protocol
between Mailman and the archives.  Here's why:

When Mailman decorates a message for copying to the list, I want to be
able to include a link to the archived message in the footer.  The
problem is that there is little or no connection between the process
doing the decoration and the process doing the archiving, and in fact
the message may be posted to the list long before the archiver gets a
crack at it.

So I don't want to have to ask the archiver for that url.  I want
Mailman to be able to calculate it from something unique in the message,
and have the archiver agree on the algorithm, so that it (or some other
translation layer) can do the mapping back to the archived article.  Or,
Mailman should be able to calculate a unique id for the article and
stuff that in a header for the archiver to index on.

-Barry