Mailman 3.0

We aim to release Mailman 3.0 on Thursday, April 16, 2015.

This page is where we are collecting the feature list and other artifacts for Mailman 3.0, which will be a major upgrade for the project. Many things that people have been wanting for years will be addressed, most notably a unified user database, true virtual domain support, and backing the Mailman data in a real database layer. From a development perspective, we will be adopting a very strict test-driven development model, utilizing modern Python technology and coding styles. The focus will be on providing core Mailman functionality through a REST API, architecturally separate components loosing communicating for better system administration and development lifecycles, while continuing the tradition of providing a turnkey solution with all the necessary parts, making it even easier to download, install, and go.

Contributors are welcome and encouraged! Discussions will happen on the mailman-developers mailing list. Anyone can check out and use the current development source branches. The TODO list below is not a commitment of features (unless marked with a Done ).

Development and status

Mailman 3 is essentially five projects:

• Mailman Core

• Postorius - The Web UI for Mailman (code)

• Mailman Client - The REST API Client

• HyperKitty - The Archiver for Mailman (code)

• Mailman Bundler - Installer for Mailman Suite including all above projects

The suite as a whole is currently at 3.0b5. We aim to get a 3.0 release of the suite out by the end of the PyCon sprints, April 13-16 2015.

Mailman 3.0 is most suitable to new installations of Mailman. We do not guarantee that it will work well for migrations and upgrades of Mailman 2.x; we believe that will work, but encourage you to make backups and test your migrations first. It is not yet at full feature parity with Mailman 2.x, but we're working on that for 3.1.

Developer resources:

• Architectural overview

• Mailman 3 code "series" in Launchpad

• bugs affecting the Mailman 3.x series

• bugs blocking the release of Mailman 3

• a 5-minute guide to get Mailman core + Postorius running

• announcement of beta 1 preview (April 2014)

• announcement of alpha 1 (April 2008)

To Do List

3.0

Here are things we need to do before Mailman 3.0 Suite final can be released.  We started this list with the leftovers from PyCon Sprint 2013 and updated it at the PyCon Sprint 2015.

• Mailman Suite

  • Update installation HOWTO(s)
  • Write release notes and announcement
  • Test new installs of 3.0 suite

• Core

  • Subscription management workflow/policy - WIP branch (see bug 1095552)

• Postorius

  • subscription moderation (see bug 1058449)

• Websites

  • Post HOWTO, release notes & announcement

3.1

TODOs for the next point release of 3.x:

• Mailman Suite:

  • Internationalization - there must be a way for the community to contribute translations and for us to integrate them into releases (bug 1414154)

  • Migration scripts for current Mailman 2 installations (bug 965532)

  • Test migration from 2 to 3

  • Mailman 2 & 3 co-existing

  • Make it easier to install with Docker
• Core
  • Subscription policy: dealing with permission to unsubscribe
• Postorius
  • Implementation of django-browserid + custom audience checking
  • Add user settings page (Likely to be completed as part of stylistica's summer of code work; may need temporary fix sooner)

  • Add ability to remove moderators/owners from a list (see bug 1062889)

  • non-member disposition [Put list of non-members in list settings with allow/deny, etc] (see bug 1414149)

  • Pull list of supported languages for a domain from Mailman core via API (see bug 1414298)

• Hyperkitty
  • if a nonmember replies via the web interface, subscribe them as nondelivery member
• Websites
  • Update visual style and information architecture of list.org and the wiki to feel more unified, be more navigable, and present a modern appearance

  • Convert www site generation from ancient ht2html scripts to something more modern like Nikola or Pelican (no CMS required!)

• LMTP process

Installation HowTo

Currently the best path for installing the entire Mailman 3 suite at once is Mailman Bundler:

Mailman Bundler setup instructions on ReadTheDocs

If you're installing on Ubuntu, see DEV/Mailman 3.0/Mailman 3.0 Suite Install on Ubuntu for the commands to install the prerequisites.

We do eventually hope to have appropriate packages for some popular distros, so if you prefer packages only, please be patient!

If you want to try Mailman 3 suite out in Docker, you might want to see DEV/Mailman 3.0/Mailman 3.0 Suite Dockerfile. I am still looking for someone to help provide nice instructions on how to use this, including connecting port 8000 inside the container to a port on the outside so that the tutorial can end with "and now go to http://localhost:8000/mailman3 to check out the web interface!"