Mailing lists provide a way for project members and other interested parties to communicate with one another about aspects of a project, and to receive project announcements.
Mailing lists work differently for public and private projects:
The following are frequently used mailing lists. Project members are automatically subscribed to the version control mailing lists:
Project owners can create other mailing lists.
To subscribe to a mailing list, select either the message-by-message or digest radio button. If you choose the message-by-message subscription, you will receive individual messages as they are sent to the mailing list. If you select the digest option, you will receive a daily digest of all of the day's messages. After you click the Subscribe button you will receive an email asking for a confirmation. Reply to this message as indicated in the email. You will receive an email welcoming you and acknowledging your successful mailing list subscription.
To unsubscribe, follow the same process, but substitute the Unsubscribe button.
To view the project mailing list archives click on the View mailing list archive link. You can sort mailing list archives by date, author, subject or thread.
To view a mailing list's archives, click on the View mailing list archive link for 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.
The Date, Author, Subject, and Thread views use unique parameters to sort through and display mail items in the archive.
The Date parameter groups mail items by year and month; all mail items received in the month of May 2001 will be grouped in one category, while all items received in January of 2000 will be grouped in another category. You can view all mail items or select a particular month and year to view. Click on the link of the group you wish to view. Mail items are presented for that group in date order, with the oldest first and the newest last.
The Author parameter groups mail items by the author. Mail items that are responses to another item are included in the group of the responding author, and not by the original message author. Clicking on the link attached to the author's name will provide a list of all mail items generated by that author in ascending date order.
The Subject parameter groups mail items by the original subject. Clicking on link to a subject will provide a list of all mail items pertaining to that subject in ascending order of receipt.
The Thread parameter groups mail items by conversation. Clicking on the link to a thread will provide a list of mail items pertaining to that thread in ascending order of receipt.
A mail list conversation occurs when 1). there is one or more responses to a mail item, and, 2). the mail program used to create the original item and the responses are capable of tracking the "in-reply-to" or "references" headers. If your mail application can support SMTP then any response you generate to a mail item will be viewable in a thread sort.
The Subject and Thread parameters appear to be very similar in function. The difference between them is that the Subject parameter sorts specifically on the subject headers of all emails. That is, all email messages with substantially similar subject headings will appear in the same grouping. For example, the "this is it" and "RE: this is it" email messages will appear in the same grouping. The Thread grouping, on the other hand, relies on the "in-reply-to" or "references" headers of email messages to establish appropriate groupings. Not all email applications are capable of tracking either the "in-reply-to" or the "references" headers. This results in messages that you might expect to be co-members of a Thread grouping will not appear together. Further, since the Thread grouping is intended to track conversations, more than one email message is required for a grouping to be created. The email message with the subject heading "this is not it" and nothing in the "in-reply-to" or "references" headers will not appear in any Thread grouping. Two email messages with the same subject header but with nothing in either the "in-reply-to" or the "references" headers will, likewise, not be grouped. Determining which parameter to choose, Subject or Thread will depend upon what your needs are. If you are most interested in finding email with the same subject, the Subject parameter is appropriate. If you are most interested in tracking a conversation taking place in email and are not concerned by missing some email that are members of no conversations or were written using email software that is incapable of tracking the "in-reply-to" or "references" headers, the Thread parameter is appropriate.
You can use the Search mailing list archive link to search for specific information within the mailing list archive. You can enter a search text and choose to sort by Subject, Author, or Body by choosing one from the drop down box provided. You can also search text strings of the archived messages using simple Boolean operators.