Systers has added new functionality to our Mailman installation. We'd like to commit part of it upstream. At the time of GHC '11, Mailman 2 is under feature freeze. Mailman 3 is about to be released, but isn't out yet.

The functionality we've added is 1. Support for dynamic lists – conversation threads that the user can unsubscribe from 2. Support for multiple email addresses – the user can associate multiple email addresses through the web interface 3. Enhanced web form – we require users to state that they're women and to type a short intro before they're approved to the list.

We want to commit #1 and #2 back to Mailman.

All three extensions live in the same branch of the codebase, and it's not clear what the extent of the changes are – or what the dependencies are. We need to make sure there aren't Systers-specific changes in what we submit – so nothing related to issue #3 or other stray references should be committed to Mailman.

• Create tickets in launchpad
• Isolate features. Separate branch per feature.
• Test each feature independently. There's a list of tests on the wiki; we may want to add more.
• Create a patch for each feature. Patches should be independent of each other.
• Test each patch against a raw mailman system
• Document tests on wiki
  • Write instructions for users
• Submit patches to Mailman
• Merge independent branches to create a single patch for Mailman 2.0 systems

Why a single patch for Mailman 2.0? We might not actually need one, but if Mailman doesn't accept our change, or accepts but doesn't release for a while, or if 3.0 adoption is slow, we can offer other communities a 2.0 patch. Since these aren't being submitted to Mailman, we can combine them in an effort to reduce users' pain of administration.