On Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 02:28:40AM +0200, Maxime Petazzoni wrote: > My name is Maxime Petazzoni, I'm a french student interested by the > SoC project about redesigning the mod_mbox interface (httpd-mbox-if). > I'm willing to get involved in Apache's development, and I believe > this project is a good start. Not that big, but with some challenge > (along with the "time attack" involved by the SoC).
Hello! Welcome. > I'm not yet entirely familiar with the mod_mbox code, but I have to > say that I find the parts I've seen a bit messy. It maybe because I'm > not used to ASF coding style and it messes my overall understanding of > the code. Perhaps. I initially wrote most of the code back in 2001 - I really haven't gone through the code since then. Most of my time on mod_mbox since then has been to write the supporting scripts for it. Paul's picked it up recently and added some nifty features. The style guide is at: http://httpd.apache.org/dev/styleguide.html. > > * General Design. Currently, mod_mbox is tied to a single .mbox > > file, or optionally, a directory of .mbox files. As we add > > searching and improve the interface, we will want the ability to > > search all mailing lists, a single list, or maybe all lists under a > > domain. This means mod_mbox needs a knowledge of what other lists > > exist. This is really about turning mod_mbox into a 'Mail Archive > > Application' vs just something that runs off of mbox files. There > > are advantages and disadvantages to both directions. For the ASF's > > use cases, I believe making it more of a unified application is > > good. > > This is an interesting point :) As you said, actually mod_mbox serves > only one mailing list archives. If we want it to handle mutliple > lists, we are not talking about design, but redesign. All the actual > mod_mbox code would only be a small part of this new mod_mbox. > > The question that must be asked is : does a so complex application > should be an Apache module ? Imho, actual mod_mbox as an module is > great because it's very fast, but I don't believe C is the best > language for the large application you are talking about. Maybe > something could mix both together ? C *is* the language of mod_mbox. =) If you want to write mod_mbox in Java, go look at Eyebrowse or other mail archiving systems. But, the general design and choice of language of mod_mbox is not really open to debate at this point in time. mod_mbox is an Apache httpd module and is also highly tied into a RESTful architecture in a way that few other mail archivers have even contemplated. -- justin
