[Mailman-Users] txt files and database

[Carl Zwanzig]

In a flurry of recycled electrons, Jean-Philippe GIOLA wrote:
> Bill Landry wrote:

> > <jean-philippe.giola at st.com>

> >> nobody has answered me so I ask my question an another time...!

I'd have thought that the answer fairly was obvious...

> >> I want to know why the mailman's developpers have choosen to store mail
> >> for the archives in txt files and not in a database like forums

> > See http://www.list.org/todo.html under the "Portability & 
> > architecture" section.

> This does not answer my question!!! not at all! well, it doesn't matter...

No, it really doesn't. Without getting in the minds of the developers:
* virtually every OS is packaged with facilities for reading/writing text files
* text files are dead easy to fix
* text files are fast for most operations, esp sequential reads and appends
* if you don't need to modify/remove rows of a table, a database becomes
  extra overhead
* just about all system managers/admins understand text files
* you can embed documentation in the text files
* text files are easy to program
* most, if not all, enterprise-quality MTAs configure from text files

I'm sure there are more reasons, but I guess that might not answer the
question, either.  One could certainly ask, "Why should the mail archives
be in a database?" I won't though.

I will note that mailman keeps parts of it's configs in python pck files, 
which are not text at all.

z!