[Mailman-Users] POSTFIX_ALIAS_CMD run once?

[Barry S. Finkel]

On 1/3/2014 2:52 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Barry S. Finkel writes:
>
>   > When I was working as a systems programmer with an IBM mainframe,
>
> Interesting anecdote, but it addresses the wrong end of the issue.  We
> already know that distros should keep their packages up to date.  The
> question is why that doesn't happen.  This:
>
>   > When I was managing a Mailman installation, I kept Mailman
>   > up-to-date, because I never knew when one of my lists would
>   > encounter a bug that had already been fixed.
>
> leads to a more interesting question: And to which distribution did
> you contribute package control files to allow all the users of that
> distribution to benefit from your work?  And did they immediately
> install them, or did their QA group dither about testing them for
> months?
>
> What we try to do in XEmacs is allow the upstream developer to commit
> directly to our package repository.  But even then not all do, and we
> don't really have a QA process (except for beta testing, so in
> practice we're never out of beta for most packages :-).  Few users are
> willing to contribute maintenance, although many contribute "first
> draft" patches and even whole packages.
>
> It's not an easy problem.
>

I was using Ubuntu, and my management told me that I had to
install a package.  So I spent some time learning how to take
the Debian/Ubuntu package, merge the current SourceForge source,
and generate a new package.  I have posted on this list that I
did this.  Only one person has requested info on what I did.

The problem I had with the Debian/Ubuntu package, besides the
fact that it was not the current version and that help might not
be available via this mailing list, was that there were a large
number of patches installed by the Debian support group.
Most of those patches were not documented, and I had no idea
what they did (or if they were needed).  IIRC, Mark looked at
the patches a few years ago.  There also was one patch that
deleted a library that, in some cases, was needed by Mailman.

When I built a new package from the current source I knew

1) exactly what code I was running, and

2) that I could receive excellent support from this list.

The problem, as I see it, with the Debian method is that when
Mark announces a new release of Mailman, the Debian support group
has to spend time re-fitting their patches.  The ONLY Debian patch
that I kept was one that placed the Mailman libraries in the
proper directories for Debian/Ubuntu.

--Barry Finkel