[Mailman3-dev] Feature request

[Barry Warsaw]

On Tue, 2004-03-16 at 16:27, Jordan Hayes wrote:
> I'd like a more flexible way to deal with the mbox file; I run a list
> that has several years of archives, and if I left all the postings in a
> single mbox file, it would be over 1GB ... which means it would get
> backed up nightly :-)
> 
> What I do now is once per year trim it down, move the generated archives
> somewhere safe, and start over.  I'd like a way to rotate the mbox file
> like I do the archives.

So, Mailman3 will have a message store, which will, in general be how
things like the archives, admindb, and new access methods will get the
data from.  I think Chuq's old idea that archives should be generated on
the fly is one that has a lot of merit.

The question then is whether we need an mbox file.  I still think we do
need to provide the option of a raw on-disk storage.  I personally hate
Unix mbox format, but a small elaboration like mmdf format is better.  I
don't care about huge mbox files personally, although I can understand
the concern.  I don't know enough about the details of MH format, but
maybe that'd be an option.  The criteria to me are: 1) don't invent a
format, 2) that there be Python support for whatever we choose, i.e.:

http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-mailbox.html

-Barry