Developers of Sympa

[Olivier Salaun <address@concealed>]

Hi Seggiy,

you wrote:
> 1. remove list doesn't automatically remove the list from the
>   'include_list' of all other lists.
>   That means the next cache update (subscribers.db) will fail, since one of
>   component lists doesn't exist anymore and we're still trying to include 
> it.

Like any 'include' fail it uses previous cache and SHOULD notify listmaster/
listowner about this problem.

> 2. you can't remove a list from include_list using wwsympa interface
>    e.g you had a list all-campus, which included (datasource include)
>    all-north and all-south.
>    Now you've removed all-north from your sympa server.
>    But you can't delete it from include list for all-campus, since it gives
>    you a syntax error if you're trying to make an empty field in place of
>    all-north.
>    So now you have to manually grep and remove all-north from all the lists
>    which include it.

We recently corrected problems with empty values in edit_list form. I had
a try on our dev. server and it allows include_list entries deletion.
What version are you running ?

> I would rather had list configs in the database.
> That would make our life much easier, since instead of "traveling" thru your
> file system and parsing text configs, we could simply make SQL queries to
> change list options.
> It's especially convenient when you have dependencies, like with the
> "datasource include" case.

This is not true for evryone, some people are not familiar to SQL and much
prefer 'grep'... 
At one stage, we thought managing list configs in a database would increase
performences, but we are not that sure now... It is not our priority at
the moment.

> What's gonna be faster, producing an interim fix which will effectively do
> the removal by looking for dependencies (grepping configs) and removing
> lists, or just wait for the new "include" code, which will include directly
> to the database ?

Managing included subscribers in DB will not help fixing this problem, as far 
as
I can imagine...

I don't think changing other lists' (the one including the deleted one) 
config 
is the better way to fix this inconsistency. I'd rather add a warning message
when closing the list : "This list's subscribers are included in other lists
(listA, listB and listC), are you sure you want to close it ?"
Would this meet your needs ?

--
Olivier Salaün
Comité Réseau des Universités