On 8/8/05, Ross Gardler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Tim Williams wrote: > > On 8/6/05, Thorsten Scherler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >>The important point is that new committer are generally > >>overwhelmed by the information and infrastructure of the project and the > >>ASF. Some learn better step by step understanding what is ASF all about > >>and what a PMC member have to do (I consider myself as such a > >>somebody). > > > > > > I personally wasn't overwhelmed. The docs are fairly good except for > > the pitiful email situation. > > Tim, can you explain what you mean by "pitiful email situation". I see > an opportunity to improve the learning process.
Ok, pitiful may have been a bit too strong;) Here are the issues I faced while setting things up. 1. The preferred way of sending with @apache.org address is apparently header mangling. My problem is that gmail doesn't yet support alternate from addresses as far as I can tell. 2. Setting up client for it with ssh tunneling. I read some mail posts about setting up an ssh tunneling using port forwarding but after an hour or so with PUTTY, I abandoned that solution. (may very well be a firewall issue that I'm unable to figure out). 3. PINE. Pine seems to be the only user-friendly client loaded on minotaur but I wasn't able to receive email to it, but I could send successfully. My current state of affairs: If I really want to send from my apache address, I'll just ssh to minotaur and use PINE. All twilliams((at))apache.org mail now forwards to my gmail account, meaning if I do reply to it, it will be from my gmail account. Alternate "from" addresses is on the gmail wishlist so hopefully this won't be an issue any for long because I do like using gmail for all mailing list stuff because of its labels and "conversation" views -- don't know how I got along without it honestly. Numbers 2 and 3 could use some documentation that I'm not smart enough to write. All this just seems unclean to me. I suppose it just seems somewhat ironic that apache, where everything is accomplished through email, has such a cludgey approach. I've never looked at James but it seems that since we have our own mail system we should be able to come up with a secure email approach that "just works" without "figuring it out". I realize documentation would help ease the burden but I guess I've got to wonder why (given how mature a technology email is) there is such a burden that needs easing? As I write this, it is apparent how dumb it was of me to stumble through some of this without at least asking a question on the list, so hopefully I didn't miss something simple and obvious. --tim
