This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Python Buzz by Jarno Virtanen. Original Post: Another mailing list manager in Python Feed Title: Python owns us Feed URL: http://sedoparking.com/search/registrar.php?domain=®istrar=sedopark Feed Description: A weblog about Python from the view point of Jarno Virtanen. Latest Python Buzz Posts Latest Python Buzz Posts by Jarno Virtanen Latest Posts From Python owns us

Enemies of Carlotta is a mailing list manager written in Python and by Lars Wirzenius, who is best known for his efforts for Linux and Debian. Enemies of Carlotta has now reached version 1.0.2, and is proving to be stable enough for real use.

The main motivation for writing another mailing list manager for Lars was to overcome some limitations of another list manager, namely the Ezmlm written by Daniel Bernstein, which he found otherwise perfectly suitable for his needs. The limitations were and are that the Ezmlm pretty much requires using Qmail and that the license of Ezmlm isn't exactly of a free software. Mailman is another mailing list manager written in Python, but Wirzenius dislikes its user interface.

The reason for choosing Python for the job, in addition to the fact that he was already familiar with Python, was that Python is fast enough for the most time consuming parts of a mailing list manager, namely I/O and text processing, both of which Python is well suited for otherwise. A simple but detailed benchmark of the software is included in the distribution, in file BENCHMARK, and with his hardware setup he was able to send out one million messages in twelve hours.

Enemies of Carlotta weighs in total of around 2000 lines of code, of which roughly half are tests, meaning that it's still quite small, both in good and in bad. The source code of Enemies of Carlotta is rather concise yet readable Python code, if not crowded with too many comments, though. I myself have no use for a mailing list manager as of right now, but I found it interesting to read through the source code.