[Mailman-Users] Which parts of mailman are platform-dependent?

[Mark Sapiro]

Steve Burling wrote:
>
>Unless I'm missing something (which is entirely possible), it's not true 
>that Mailman is pure Python.  There is a bunch of C code in 
>$MAILMAN_SRC/src, which gets compiled into platform-specific executable 
>files.  These end up as $MAILMAN_HOME/mail/mailman, and 
>$MAILMAN_HOME/cgi-bin/<whatever>.  And it's these that I'm concerned with. 


You are correct. Since these modules get compiled and bound with local
C runtime that is presumably platform specific, the bound programs are
platform specific.


>$MAILMAN_HOME/mail/mailman gets executed by the MTA, as a result of the 
>pipes in the alias file.  So they had better be compiled for the same 
>architecture as the mailer.  $MAILMAN_HOME/cgi-bin/* get executed by the 
>web server, and so had better be compiled for the same architecture as the 
>web server.  If, as might happen for us, those architectures are different, 
>then some extra precautions have to be taken.


Correct again.


<snip>

>my concern is that if we end up in the 
>unenviable position of having to leave our mail server on the old hardware 
>for awhile, whether there is anything *other* than 
>$MAILMAN_HOME/mail/mailman that I have to make sure gets built for that 
>platform.


configure has a --exec-prefix option to set the path for the
architecture dependent stuff. This affects the paths for the mail/,
cgi-bin/, and bin/ directories. It also affects the Defaults.py
setting of EXEC_PREFIX which in turn sets WRAPPER_DIR which is only
used by bin/check_perms and by Mailman/MTA/Utils.py for making aliases.

I don't think there actually is any architecture dependant stuff in
bin/, so I think you are correct to be concerned only with the
wrappers in mail/ and cgi-bin/.

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