> Do you test on a production server, other (test) server, or local > mbox with Mutt as your client? > There are lots of possibilities. I test using a big (and growing) spam collection, which I keep so I can regression test my current rule set. Thats quite crude: if everything in the collection is recognised as spam, nothing gets flagged up during the test run and thats a pass.
My setup is fairly simple: I run spamc/spamd on a development box and have a collection of bash scripts that can pass one or more spam samples (piped into spamc) through spamd for testing. I maintain local copies of all cf files and a set of bash scripts that can: - lint check the cf file collection locally be calling spamassassin - start/stop/status check the local spamd (its stopped except when testing rule changes - move cf files to the local /etc/mail/spamassassin and restart spamd - run selected messages through spamc/spamd showing SA generated headers or - run selected messages through spamc/spamd showing whether the rule under test fires - run a full regression test that displays the messages that AREN'T flagged as spam - load the current cf file collection into my production mail server and restart spamd. I don't pretend this is the best approach, but it works for me and has also been used to test, develop and control the installation of SA plugins. Hopefully this shows that you can run spamc/spamd anywhere, that it doesn't need to be associated with an MTA for rule development and testing and that the test setup can be quite simple - certainly no more complex than you'd use to develop any other single-purpose server. Martin
