Project Mailing Lists

Project resources for members: Index

Project resources for members
  Project Home Page
  Project News
  Project Download
  Project Members
  You are here: Project Mailing Lists
  - About project mailing lists
  - Subscribing and unsubscribing
  - Other mailing list features
  - Mailing list archives
  Project Documentation
  Project Source Code
  Project Issues
Back to main Help index

About project mailing lists

Mailing lists provide a way for developers and other interested parties to communicate with one another about aspects of a project, and to receive project announcements. In general, the way mailing lists work depends upon the type of project:

- Open source project mailing lists are available to any subscriber, but may be granted limited membership by the project owners.

- Proprietary project mailing lists are always private; only approved subscribers, usually project members, may join.

Development projects on this site include one or more of the following mailing lists:

> dev@projectname.domain.com
>   The main list for developers to discuss specific project development issues and requirements for version control in the project.

> cvs@projectname.domain.com
>   Automated notifications of file version control changes and discussion of those changes.

> announce@projectname.domain.com
>   Announcements of new releases and other major project events.

> issues@projectname@domain.com
>   Automated notifications and discussions of the project's reported issues (defects, enhancements, features, tasks, and patches) and changes made to issues, such as reassignment, comments, or resolution.

> users@projectname.domain.com
>   A more general discussion list for the project's end users.

Subscribing and unsubscribing

You can subscribe or unsubscribe to mailing lists for a particular project by selecting "Mailing Lists" in the Project Resources tool bar.

The Project Mail page includes subscribe/unsubscribe links for either a message-by-message or digest version of the list, as well as options to view each project list's archives.

To begin the subscription process, click on the hyperlinked mailing list address to which you want to subscribe and send the message from your email client.

You should receive a response asking for a confirmation. After you reply as indicated in the email, you will receive an email welcoming you and acknowledging your successful mailing list subscription. Follow the same process for unsubscribing, but substitute the unsubscribe link.

Once on the Mailing Lists page, you can view the project mailing list archives by clicking on the "view archive" link next to the mailing list title for that list. Click on the date range and subject links to specify the sort of messages you want to see.

All mailing lists associated with the project are listed here. The links on this page allow you to subscribe (or unsubscribe) to the available mailing lists.

Most lists also have a corresponding "digest" version -- if you subscribe to this you receive a single daily email with all of that day's postings.

Other mailing list features

Posting a message
  To post a message to a mailing list for a project, send your message to:
  listname@projectname.domain
  For example, to post a message to the developer mailing list in project platform, send email to:
  dev@platform.projectname.domain

Getting help
  To get an automated help message for a mailing list, send a blank email message to:
  listname-help@projectname.domain
  For example, for the dev mailing list in project platform, send email to:
  dev-help@platform.projectname.domain

Contact list moderator
  To communicate with the list moderator, send an email message to:
  list-owner@projectname.domain

Mailing list archives

Project/component mailing list archiving is handled by EyeBrowse, an open source tool that stores and indexes list messages, providing multiple options for browsing, reading, and searching mailing list archives via a web browser. Beyond storing messages, EyeBrowse adds a database and text indexing engine to handle rapid message search and retrieval.

To view a mailing list's archives, select the Mailing List option in the Project Resources tool bar to see a list of all mailing lists for that project. Click on the View Archive link next to the list you want to view. The default view for browsing mailing list archives is by date summary. Other summary views available are: by Author, by Subject, and by Thread.

You can use the Search Archive link to add filters to your search criteria. You can enter a search text and choose to sort by Subject, Author, or Body by choosing one from the drop down box under the text box. You can also search text strings of the archived messages using simple Boolean operators.

Back to main Help index