Mailman - The GNU Mailing List Management System

Copyright (C) 1998-2010 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA

Here is a history of user visible changes to Mailman.

3.0 alpha 6 – “Cut to the Chase”

(2010-09-20)

Commands

  • The functionality of ‘bin/list_members’ has been moved to ‘bin/mailman members’.
  • ‘bin/mailman info’ -v/–verbose output displays the file system layout paths Mailman is currently configured to use.

Configuration

  • You can now configure the paths Mailman uses for queue files, lock files, data files, etc. via the configuration file. Define a file system ‘layout’ and then select that layout in the [mailman] section. Default layouts include ‘local’ for putting everything in /var/tmp/mailman, ‘dev’ for local development, and ‘fhs’ for Filesystem Hierarchy Standard 2.3 (LP #490144).
  • Queue file directories now live in $var_dir/queues.

REST

  • lazr.restful has been replaced by restish as the REST publishing technology used by Mailman.
  • New REST API for getting all the members of a roster for a specific mailing list.
  • New REST API for getting and setting a mailing list’s configuration. GET and PUT are supported to retrieve the current configuration, and set all the list’s writable attributes in one request. PATCH is supported to partially update a mailing list’s configuration. Individual options can be set and retrieved by using subpaths.
  • Subscribing an already subscribed member via REST now returns a 409 HTTP error. LP: #552917
  • Fixed a bug when deleting a list via the REST API. LP: #601899

Architecture

  • X-BeenThere header is removed.
  • Mailman no longer touches the Sender or Errors-To headers.
  • Chain actions can now fire Zope events in their _process() implementations.
  • Environment variable $MAILMAN_VAR_DIR can be used to control the var/ directory for Mailman’s runtime files. New environment variable $MAILMAN_UNDER_MASTER_CONTROL is used instead of the qrunner’s –subproc/-s option.

Miscellaneous

  • Allow X-Approved and X-Approve headers, equivalent to Approved and Approve. LP: #557750
  • Various test failure fixes. LP: #543618, LP: #544477
  • List-Post header is retained in MIME digest messages. LP: #526143
  • Importing from a Mailman 2.1.x list is partially supported.

3.0 alpha 5 – “Distant Early Warning”

(2010-01-18)

REST

  • Add REST API for subscription services. You can now:
    • list all members in all mailing lists
    • subscribe (and possibly register) an address to a mailing list
    • unsubscribe an address from mailing list

Commands

  • ‘bin/dumpdb’ is now ‘bin/mailman qfile’
  • ‘bin/unshunt’ is now ‘bin/mailman unshunt’
  • Mailman now properly handles the ‘-join’, ‘-leave’, and ‘-confirm’ email commands and sub-addresses. ‘-subscribe’ and ‘-unsubscribe’ are aliases for ‘-join’ and ‘-leave’ respectively.

Configuration

  • devmode settings now live in their own [devmode] section.
  • Mailman now searches for a configuration file using this search order. The first file that exists is used.
    • -C config command line argument
    • $MAILMAN_CONFIG_FILE environment variable
    • ./mailman.cfg
    • ~/.mailman.cfg
    • /etc/mailman.cfg

3.0 alpha 4 – “Vital Signs”

(2009-11-28)

Commands

  • ‘bin/inject’ is now ‘bin/mailman inject’, with some changes
  • ‘bin/mailmanctl’ is now ‘bin/mailman start|stop|reopen|restart’
  • ‘bin/mailman version’ is added (output same as ‘bin/mailman –version’)
  • ‘bin/mailman members’ command line arguments have changed. It also now ignores blank lines and lines that start with #. It also no longer quits when it sees an address that’s already subscribed.
  • ‘bin/withlist’ is now ‘bin/mailman withlist’, and its command line arguments have changed.
  • ‘bin/mailman lists’ command line arguments have changed.
  • ‘bin/genaliases’ is now ‘bin/mailman aliases’

Architecture

  • A near complete rewrite of the low-level SMTP delivery machinery. This greatly improves readability, testability, reuse and extensibility. Almost all the old functionality has been retained. The smtp_direct.py handler is gone.
  • Refactor model objects into the mailman.model subpackage.
  • Refactor most of the i18n infrastructure into a separate flufl.i18n package.
  • Switch from setuptools to distribute.
  • Remove the dependency on setuptools_bzr
  • Do not create the .mo files during setup.

Configuration

  • All log files now have a ‘.log’ suffix by default.
  • The substitution placeholders in the verp_format configuration variable have been renamed.
  • Add a devmode configuration variable that changes some basic behavior. Most importantly, it allows you to set a low-level SMTP recipient for all mail for testing purposes. See also devmode_recipient.

3.0 alpha 3 – “Working Man”

(2009-08-21)

Configuration

  • Configuration is now done through lazr.config. Defaults.py is dead. lazr.config files are essentially hierarchical ini files.
  • Domains are now stored in the database instead of in the configuration file.
  • pre- and post- initialization hooks are now available to plugins. Specify additional hooks to run in the configuration file.
  • Add the environment variable $MAILMAN_CONFIG_FILE which overrides the -C command line option.
  • Make LMTP more compliant with Postfix docs (Patrick Koetter)
  • Added a NullMTA for mail servers like Exim which just work automatically.

Architecture

  • ‘bin/mailman’ is a new super-command for managing Mailman from the command line. Some older bin scripts have been converted, with more to come.
  • Mailman now has an administrative REST interface which can be used to get information from and manage Mailman remotely.
  • Back port of Mailman 2.1’s limit on .bak file restoration. After 3 restores, the file is moved to the bad queue, with a .psv extension. (Mark Sapiro)
  • Digest creation is moved into a new queue runner so it doesn’t block main message processing.

Other changes

  • bin/make_instance is no longer necessary, and removed
  • The debug log is turned up to info by default to reduce log file spam.

Building and installation

  • All doc tests can now be turned into documentation, via Sphinx. Just run bin/docs after bin/buildout.

3.0 alpha 2 – “Grand Designs”

(03-Jan-2009)

Licensing

  • Mailman 3 is now licensed under the GPLv3.

Bug fixes

  • Changed bin/arch to attempt to open the mbox before wiping the old archive. Launchpad bug #280418.
  • Added digest.mbox and pending.pck to the ‘list’ files checked by check_perms. Launchpad bug #284802.

Architecture

  • Converted to using zope.testing as the test infrastructure. Use bin/test now to run the full test suite. <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/zope.testing/3.7.1>
  • Partially converted to using lazr.config as the new configuration regime. Not everything has been converted yet, so some manual editing of mailman/Defaults.py is required. This will be rectified in future versions. <http://launchpad.net/lazr.config>
  • All web-related stuff is moved to its own directory, effectively moving it out of the way for now.
  • The email command infrastructure has been reworked to play more nicely with the plug-in architecture. Not all commands have yet been converted.

Other changes

  • The LMTP server now properly calculates the message’s original size.
  • For command line scripts, -C names the configuration file to use. For convenient testing, if -C is not given, then the environment variable MAILMAN_CONFIG_FILE is consulted.
  • Support added for a local MHonArc archiver, as well as archiving automatically in the remote Mail-Archive.com service.
  • The permalink proposal for supporting RFC 5064 has been adopted.
  • Mailing lists no longer have a .web_page_url attribute; this is taken from the mailing list’s domain’s base_url attribute.
  • Incoming MTA selection is now taken from the config file instead of plugins. An MTA for Postfix+LMTP is added. bin/genaliases works again.
  • If a message has no Message-ID, the stock archivers will return None for the permalink now instead of raising an assertion.
  • IArchiver no longer has an is_enabled property; this is taken from the configuration file now.

Installation

3.0 alpha 1 – “Leave That Thing Alone”

(08-Apr-2008)

User visible changes

  • So called ‘new style’ subject prefixing is the default now, and the only option. When a list’s subject prefix is added, it’s always done so before any Re: tag, not after. E.g. ‘[My List] Re: The subject’.
  • RFC 2369 headers List-Subscribe and List-Unsubscribe now use the preferred -join and -leave addresses instead of the -request address with a subject value.

Configuration

  • There is no more separate configure; make; make install step. Mailman 3.0 is a setuptools package.

  • Mailman can now be configured via a ‘mailman.cfg’ file which lives in $VAR_PREFIX/etc. This is used to separate the configuration from the source directory. Alternative configuration files can be specified via -C/–config for most command line scripts. mailman.cfg contains Python code. mm_cfg.py is no more. You do not need to import Defaults.py in etc/mailman.cfg. You should still consult Defaults.py for the list of site configuration variables available to you.

    See the etc/mailman.cfg.sample file.

  • PUBLIC_ARCHIVE_URL and DEFAULT_SUBJECT_PREFIX now takes $-string substitutions instead of %-string substitutions. See documentation in Defaults.py.in for details.

  • Message headers and footers now only accept $-string substitutions; %-strings are no longer supported. The substitution variable ‘_internal_name’ has been removed; use $list_name or $real_name instead. The substitution variable $fqdn_listname has been added. DEFAULT_MSG_FOOTER in Defaults.py.in has been updated accordingly.

  • The KNOWN_SPAMMERS global variable is replaced with HEADER_MATCHES. The mailing list’s header_filter_rules variable is replaced with header_matches which has the same semantics as HEADER_MATCHES, but is list-specific.

  • DEFAULT_MAIL_COMMANDS_MAX_LINES -> EMAIL_COMMANDS_MAX_LINES

  • All SMTP_LOG_* templates use $-strings and all consistently write the Message-ID as the first item in the log entry.

  • DELIVERY_MODULE now names a handler, not a module (yes, this is a misnomer, but it will likely change again before the final release).

Architecture

  • Internally, all strings are Unicodes.

  • Implementation of a chain-of-rules based approach for deciding whether a message should initially be accepted, held for approval, rejected/bounced, or discarded. This replaces most of the disposition handlers in the pipeline. The IncomingRunner now only processes message through the rule chains, and once accepted, places the message in a new queue processed by the PipelineRunner.

  • Substantially reworked the entire queue runner process management, including mailmanctl, a new master script, and the qrunners. This should be much more robust and reliable now.

  • The Storm ORM is used for data storage, with the SQLite backend as the default relational database.

  • Zope interfaces are used to describe the major components.

  • Users are now stored in a unified database, and shared across all mailing lists.

  • Mailman’s web interface is now WSGI compliant. WSGI is a Python standard (PEP 333) allowing web applications to be (more) easily integrated with any number of existing Python web application frameworks. For more information see:

    http://www.wsgi.org/wsgi http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0333/

    Mailman can still be run as a traditional CGI program of course.

  • Mailman now provides an LMTP server for more efficient integration with supporting mail servers (e.g. Postfix, Sendmail). The Local Mail Transport Protocol is defined in RFC 2033:

    http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2033.html

  • Virtual domains are now fully supported in that mailing lists of the same name can exist in more than one domain. This is accomplished by renaming the lists/ and archives/ subdirectories after the list’s posting address. For example, data for list foo in example.com and list foo in example.org will be stored in lists/foo@example.com and lists/foo@example.org.

    For Postfix or manual MTA users, you will need to regenerate your mail aliases. Use bin/genaliases.

    VIRTUAL_HOST_OVERVIEW has been removed, effectively Mailman now operates as if it were always enabled. If your site has more than one domain, you must configure all domains by using add_domain() in your etc/mailman.cfg flie (see below – add_virtual() has been removed).

  • If you had customizations based on Site.py, you will need to re-implement them. Site.py has been removed.

  • The site list is no more. You can remove your ‘mailman’ site list unless you want to retain it for other purposes, but it is no longer used (or required) by Mailman. You should set NO_REPLY_ADDRESS to an address that throws away replies, and you should set SITE_OWNER_ADDRESS to an email address that reaches the person ultimately responsible for the Mailman installation. The MAILMAN_SITE_LIST variable has been removed.

  • qrunners no longer restart on SIGINT; SIGUSR1 is used for that now.

Internationalization Big Changes

  • Translators should work only on messages/<lang>/LC_MESSAGES/mailman.po. Templates files are generated from mailman.po during the build process.

New Features

  • Confirmed member change of address is logged in the ‘subscribe’ log, and if admin_notify_mchanges is true, a notice is sent to the list owner using a new adminaddrchgack.txt template.
  • There is a new list attribute ‘subscribe_auto_approval’ which is a list of email addresses and regular expressions matching email addresses whose subscriptions are exempt from admin approval. RFE 403066.

Command line scripts

  • Most scripts have grown a -C/–config flag to allow you to specify a different configuration file. Without this, the default etc/mailman.cfg file will be used.
  • the -V/–virtual-host-overview switch in list_lists has been removed, while -d/–domain and -f/–full have been added.
  • bin/newlist is renamed bin/create_list and bin/rmlist is renamed bin/remove_list. Both take fully-qualified list names now (i.e. the list’s posting address), but also accept short names, in which case the default domain is used. newlist’s -u/–urlhost and -e/–emailhost switches have been removed. The domain that the list is being added to must already exist.
  • Backport the ability to specify additional footer interpolation variables by the message metadata ‘decoration-data’ key.

Bug fixes and other patches

  • Removal of DomainKey/DKIM signatures is now controlled by Defaults.py mm_cfg.py variable REMOVE_DKIM_HEADERS (default = No).
  • Queue runner processing is improved to log and preserve for analysis in the shunt queue certain bad queue entries that were previously logged but lost. Also, entries are preserved when an attempt to shunt throws an exception (1656289).
  • The processing of Topics regular expressions has changed. Previously the Topics regexp was compiled in verbose mode but not documented as such which caused some confusion. Also, the documentation indicated that topic keywords could be entered one per line, but these entries were not handled properly. Topics regexps are now compiled in non-verbose mode and multi- line entries are ‘ored’. Existing Topics regexps will be converted when the list is updated so they will continue to work.
  • The List-Help, List-Subscribe, and List-Unsubscribe headers were incorrectly suppressed in messages that Mailman sends directly to users.
  • The ‘adminapproved’ metadata key is renamed ‘moderator_approved’.