[Mailman-Developers] Mailman 3.0 fresh install - problems from python interpreter

[Barry Warsaw]

Hi Jessy,

You're doing everything right, but there's one conceptual step that you're
missing, and which isn't evident from the docs.

As Mark says, `mailman shell` is the best way to get a Python interactive
interpreter shell to play with the internal Mailman API.  Why is this better
than just running the virtualenv's `python` interpreter directly?  It's
because there are a bunch of subsystems that have to be initialized before
things will work correctly.  E.g., the Zope component architecture (ZCA), the
logging subsystem, the configuration subsystem, queues, rules, pipelines,
etc.  The exception you're getting is because the ZCA hasn't been initialized
yet.

`mailman shell` ensures that everything is initialized, then it gives you an
interpreter prompt.

Hope that helps.
-Barry