NAME

Promulger -- Simple, Unixy mailing list manager

SYNOPSIS

# In a config file somewhere:
aliases = /path/to/etc/aliases
list_home = /path/your/mta/can/write/to/lists

# then
/path/to/pmg/bin/pmg -c /path/to/config/pmg.conf newlist mylist

# then
mail -s subscribe mylist-request@yourhost < /dev/null
mail -s post mylist@yourhost < first_post

# cleanup
/path/to/pmg/bin/pmg -c /path/to/config/pmg.conf rmlist mylist

DESCRIPTION

Promulger is a simple, lightweight mailinglist manager (mlm) that subscribes to the Unix philosophy and aims to be sysadmin-friendly. Plaintext configuration and data files are favored over opaque binary files. The simplest possible thing that can work is the preferred approach. Simple algorithms, simple tools that do one thing well. An administrator should be able to read the config files and the data files without reading these docs and understand what's going on.

Promulger strives to be easy to install while not reinventing the wheel. To this end it uses modern tools on the CPAN where it makes sense, but nonetheless tries to be minimal. It doesn't need the enterprise-grade flexibility of Catalyst, but at the same time writing raw CGI was bad ten years ago and still is.

Another design goal (one further in the future) is standards-compliance. There are a number of documents and RFCs related to email and mailing lists. Promulger seeks to adhere to these where it makes sense to do so, with the belief that consistent software is easier to use and manage. As Promulger supports relevant standards, the documentation will be updated to describe which standards are respected and any deviations (along with the rationale therefor).

LIMITATIONS

Consider this section a TODO list.

Presently, Promulger doesn't support VERP, and as a result doesn't support bounce parsing. It's being released to be tested on small, closed networks with clueful admins. If fishing messages out of your MTA's queue isn't something you feel comfortable doing, Promulger isn't for you right now.

Another thing Promulger lacks is an archive. This is coming, but in the meantime, you're on your own.

There's no support for the standard mailing list headers. This means that filtering will need to work on the mailing list sender address for now.

It's not very customizable--in fact, it has no flexibility at all.

ENVIRONMENT

Promulger doesn't read any environment variables.

AUTHOR

Chris Nehren

CONTRIBUTORS

No one, yet. Patches welcome!

COPYRIGHT

LICENSE

This library is free software and may be distributed under the same terms as perl itself.

p5sagit/Promulger