[Mailman-Users] Mail Man Help

[Patrick Bogen]

On 9/27/06, Barry Finkel <b19141 at britaine.ctd.anl.gov> wrote:
> the source(s) of these differences.  Is there 2.1.8 code that has not
> been ported to the Ubuntu 2.1.5-9?
I don't know. This is up to the Ubuntu folk. *usually* the -9 means
there have been 9 security patches to that version. How up to date
this is, exactly, is another question.

> Is there code that Ubuntu (or its
> "source" Debian) has written that has not been sent to Free Software
> Foundation?  Note that neither has the latest security patch installed.
Usually the only changes Debian makes in the case where the upstream
developer is active and cooperating (I don't know about Ubuntu) are
changes necessary to make Mailman fit into their file structure. Which
is to say, nothing you really need to care about if you elect to use
the official mailman sources. So, I would normally assume the answer
to this is "no".


> I do not know what was needed to "debianize" the code; I would have
> assumed that the code from the FSF would run on any Linux without
> modification.  If any mods were needed, the FSF developers would
Changes to debian packages, as mentioned above, are *usually* bug
fixes (in the case where upstream has essentially abandoned the
package) or changes to allow the package to comply with Debian's file
structure guide, whatever it's called.

> I could envision a few changes, maybe to install mailman into different
> directories to match the Debian standards, but 83 modules that are
> different seems to be too many.
You might be surprised at the number of places that reference files
directly, that need to be changed. Also, it *is* quite possible that
2.1.5-9 is out of date compared to 2.1.8, since likely only
bug/security fixes were applied, and not new features.

All told, you're probably better off using the official sources, if
you don't mind the (slight?) inconvenience. FWIW, if you're going to
do this, store the './configure <foo>' string you use the first time,
so you don't have to re-figure it each time you upgrade.



-- 
- Patrick Bogen