GNU Mailman 3.0 is out !

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in internet on (#8231)
story image(Finally) after years of development, Mailman has reached its third release.

It's a big change, thoroughly explained in this (not so) old article by Barry Warsaw, the lead developer behind Mailman 3.0. In short, Mailman has been organized as a suite of 5 subprojects, each in charge of a different aspect:
  • Mailman Core - the core delivery engine which accepts messages, providers moderation and processing of the messages, and delivers messages to mailing list member recipients. It exposes its functionality to other components over a private, administrative REST API.
  • Postorius - A new Django-based web user interface for end users and list administrators.
  • HyperKitty - A new Django-based web archiver.
  • mailman.client - The official Python 2 and 3 bindings to the administrative REST API. Used by Postorius and HyperKitty, this provides a convenient, object-based API for programmatic access to the Core.
  • mailman-bundler - A convenient package for building out the entire Mailman suite.
Among the new shiny things:
What's new about Mailman 3? Well, lots! Some highlights include:
  • Backed by a relational database;
  • True support for multiple domains, with no cross-domain mailing list naming restrictions;
  • One user account to manage all your subscriptions on a site;
  • The core's functionality exposed through an administrative REST+JSON API;
  • All passwords hashed by default, and no monthly password reminders!
  • Users can post to lists via the web interface;
  • Built-in archive searching!
and more. Tons more.
Note that it is not recommended to update your lists from 2.x to 3.0 zero yet as it may not go smoothly. The update feature is planned for 3.1 but if you've got some test machine, feel free to play around with the update and report bugs.

[submitter's note]: some details in the announcements seemed a bit weird to me, notable, I quote, "The core requires Python 3.4 while Postorius and HyperKitty require Python 2.7.". Why use two different (and maybe incompatible) versions of python ? Another one is about the API numbering scheme. Well, we'll see how it goes ...
Reply 5 comments

Python versions (Score: 2, Informative)

by mth@pipedot.org on 2015-04-29 15:15 (#8286)

[submitter's note]: some details in the announcements seemed a bit weird to me, notable, I quote, "The core requires Python 3.4 while Postorius and HyperKitty require Python 2.7.". Why use two different (and maybe incompatible) versions of python ?
That's not a 'maybe': Python 2.x and 3.x are incompatible, since Python 3 made some backwards incompatible changes to clean up the language. While it is easy enough to run each process in a different Python version, it would simplify things if they just updated all subprojects to Python 3.x. There is a conversion tool for it (2to3) that works pretty well in my experience.

Re: Python versions (Score: 1)

by seriously@pipedot.org on 2015-04-29 16:34 (#82HH)

I do know that there are incompatibilities between the two versions. But there are also old 2.x codes that will run just fine on 3.x, so what I meant is that maybe these Mailman tools could run just fine on 3.x ... or maybe not. I agree that going all-3.x would simplify this for us. Apologies for not being clear in my phrasing :-)

This looks awesome (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2015-04-29 15:48 (#828S)

Mailman was getting a bit long in the tooth and some of these improvements look compelling, like the web front-ends that give easy access to archives and such. There's a lot to be said for mailing lists as communication vehicles. They have all the benefits of Usenet with more finegrained controls and the ability of each user to choose the mail reader s/he likes best, etc. There's also a decent sense of community on mailing lists - all a good thing. Glad to see Mailman is keeping it fresh. I'll be interested in checking this out.

What ever happened to mayordomo, by the way? Remember when people talked about being on LISTSERVs? That word has gone the way of Telnet and FTP - gone to all but the crustiest of greybeards and server admins.

Re: This looks awesome (Score: 2, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2015-04-29 16:03 (#828W)

LWN had a brief review of Mailman/HyperKitty a few weeks ago here: #5XX6

Re: This looks awesome (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2015-04-30 10:49 (#84A6)

LOVE the name "hyperkitty." It works on so many levels. I look forward to reading hyperkitty archives using "mutt." Just because life is awesome.