Bottom line, I think Abhilash is right: we should emphasize the pip install (probably into a venv) as the "best supported" install. Perhaps we can prioritize being more systematic about documenting the various approaches, not in term of the details (although that's a "nice to have"), but with respect to the advantages and disadvantages of the various install methods.
Comments welcome.
A few comments on the distro installs for the Mailman nerds:
Mark Dadgar writes:
- The package installs are non-standard with respect to the way the mailman3 community tends to install them,
To be fair, *most* of the differences with Linux distros is that Mailman uses a "classic" $prefix-style install into $prefix/usr and $prefix/var, while the distros follow the FHS (File Hierarchy System) layout. The FHS layout in many ways is more closely-specified, and more maintainable at the distro and system levels, but it requires more effort than just throwing files into a set of more or less reasonably organized directories. Mailman 3 now provides an option for (better) FHS conformance at installation, which should reduce this problem over time.
Most of the rest have to do with protecting config files from overwriting by distro upgrades. That is annoying, because location of config files is a frequent question in support, and also can lead to duplicate config files (and "great fun had by all" :-/ ) if the admin follows the recommendation of the "wrong" documentation.
Distribution packages tend to be useful for really basic things like libraries. For constantly evolving projects where you need to be current, they're more of a detriment.
So much this.
I agree. But I prefer to phrase it as "mission-critical features are evolving" rather than "constantly evolving". I suspect there are a lot of people who have a casual need for a few mailing lists, and will do fine with Mailman 3 from $DISTRO stable or LTS. :-)
The thing is, I think those folks will find "apt-get mailman-suite" or "yum mailman-suite" with no help from us. And I agree that the differences between the organic evolution of Mailman setup within the project and the distros' FHS-based installs are a real consideration if Mailman is a mission-critical application for you. On the other hand, Brian's "greenfield setup of a server specialized to Mailman" is probably a minority interest (ie, in terms of the number of site admins involved -- it probably serves a majority of subscriptions!)
Steve