[Mailman-Users] /etc/mailman/mm_cfg.py

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Mark Sapiro writes:

 > Debian also puts the files where they belong, including putting
 > mm_cfg.py in /etc/mailman/ which I agree is the right place, but Mailman
 > still thinks all the files are in /var/lib/mailman

Ah, OK, I see what you mean.  Except IIRC Mailman proper knows the
absolute paths to where its list data is.  The problem is that the
scripts in bin expect relative paths, so the admin wants to cd to
/var/lib/mailman and operate from there, thus the link to bin for the
admin's convenience, and the scripts in bin expect Mailman to be at
../Mailman, so a link to Mailman is needed too.

 > While this all works, and it is arguably better than patching
 > Mailman in ways that make it more difficult to upgrade from source
 > should you want to,

That is a PITA, so let's not even think about anybody doing that! :-)

 > it just seems somehow unclean to me, and that's all I meant to say.

Indeed, I agree with that.  I don't see any way to avoid uncleanness,
though, given "dynamic linking" (here, importing) of "shared" modules,
and the occasional dependency on minor-version-specific
idiosyncracies.  This particular ugliness is especially useful to
admins (although we might want to make sure we reduce or avoid it in
Mailman 3)?