Autoresponding for obsolete coreutils lists

[James Youngman]

Dear Mailman administrator,

The GNU file /com/mailer/aliases includes alias defintions like this:

# merged into bug-coreutils on 2004-08-17
bug-fileutils: bug-coreutils
# merged into bug-coreutils on 2004-08-17
bug-sh-utils: bug-coreutils
# merged into bug-coreutils on 2004-08-17
bug-textutils: bug-coreutils

These days, mail to those lists consists only of bug reports relating
to long-superseded versions of the relevant GNU packages.  At the
moment, someone has to manually reply to each email and explain to the
poster that they need to upgrade their software and try their problem
again.

I think it would be a step forward if we automated this.  I can think
of a number of ways of doing this, but I would guess that you can
think of a better one.  To get the ball rolling, we could do this:

1. Add a new mailing list, address@hidden
2. This list would have one or two members who simply keep an eye on
the list to make sure that things don't go wrong.
3. We enable the mailman feature which leads it to automatically reply
to all list postings.
4. The automated reply is a canned message pointing to a page on the
GNU website which explains how the various packages were merged into
coreutils.   The message could also include the same information in
ASCII for the benefit of those who have special access needs.
5. Once this is proven to work well, we change the aliases on
/com/mailer/aliases to point address@hidden and friends to
address@hidden
6. As future packages are renamed, we can redirect other lists to
bug-obsolete-packages, and update the messages as necessary.



What do you think?


James.



On 3/23/07, Jim Meyering <address@hidden> wrote:
> "James Youngman" <address@hidden> wrote:
> > On 3/23/07, Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> The fact that you mailed the obsolete bug-fileutils list implies that you
> >> may be due for an upgrade.  fileutils merged into coreutils, and the
> >> latest stable version is now 6.9.
> >
> > Is it time perhaps to automate responses for the various obsolete lists?
>
> That would be great, if there is a way to ensure that the responses go
> only to legitimate senders.  I've just updated the file (only in git/cvs),
> README-package-renamed-to-coreutils, with a few more URLS:
> ------------------------------------------
>
> As of 2002-09-01, the GNU fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
> packages have been merged into one, called the GNU coreutils.
> See http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ for a description.
> Here's the FAQ list:
>
>   http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/
>
> For information on the mailing lists associated with the
> coreutils package, see these:
>
>   http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/coreutils-announce
>   http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
>
> mailing list archives are here:
>
>   http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.announce
>   http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.core-utils.bugs (up to the minute)
>   http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-coreutils/ (updated every 12 hours)