[Mailman-Users] Serialize?

[Dan Mick]

G. Armour Van Horn wrote:

> At this point, Barry clearly says (on the website) it isn't ready, but he
> has legal constraints to worry about, or at least a reputation to protect,
> if everyone runs the beta and then problems develop. You only risk one
> machine (and its users) at a time.

Surely not legal, but yes.

> Mailman is a very small part of my business, and a little hobby interest on
> the side. This means I need it to be stable, I don't have time to move to
> 2.1 and have to move back. I'd rather move to 2.1 and leave it for a while,
> not run 2.1b3, 2.1b4, maybe 2.1b5, and then 2.1.0.

It should be noted that it's *very* trivial to upgrade.  I do this probably
four times a week when Barry's busy:

mmstop (a wrapper for /etc/init.d/mailman stop)
cvs -q update -dAP
resolve any conflicts from my local hacks (usually 30 seconds)
./doconfig (wrapper for ./configure with flags)
make install
mmstart (see above)

total time about 5 minutes; total number of problems I've seen from
interim software: probably 10 over the lifetime of 2.0.x, most having
to do with broken email messages that get evolving parsing code's panties
all bunched.

It's been my experience that interim CVS versions of Mailman are *very*
stable.  As usual: your mileage *will* vary.  But Mailman is not very fragile,
in my experience.

And if you want to, keeping track of your last-stable date or
revision tag, and rolling back with CVS, is pretty easy too.
If you add in "back up the critical config.pck's" it's even easier to
roll back.  (Not that I've ever had to.)