[Mailman-Developers] MM 2.1 - Relative vs. absolute URLs in admin and admindb interfaces.

[Mark Sapiro]

There is a thread in mailman-users at
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2013-April/074961.html>.

In short the user's difficulty is her world facing host name doesn't
work inside her LAN so from inside, she accesses the web interface via
IP address or some other host name. This leads to the issue that some
links and form actions in the web admin and admindb interfaces are
absolute using the list's web_page_url which has the host name that
doesn't work inside the LAN.

Granted, this can be addressed in the network or the work station's
/etc/hosts file, but the question arises as to whether these URLs need
to be absolute, particularly because they're already in the minority.

I was going to call this a MM 2.1 bug and fix it but then I came across
this 10 year old comment from Barry at
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/265838>.

   We had lots of problems when non-absolute urls where used,
   although I don't remember the exact details of the problems.
    Eventually we'll probably make all urls absolute and get
   rid of this argument to GetScriptURL().

So my question is would there be issues if the URL in the form action
and the leter/digit links on the web admin Membership List page or those
in the admindb interface were relative instead of absolute and what
might those issues be?

Does anyone know?

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan