Re: Suggestion for web page mailing list archive

[Jason Molenda <jason-gcclist at molenda dot com>]

Kelley Cook wrote:

> It would make life somewhat easier if someone were to add a ../current/ alias
> to the html server to always reflect the directory of the current month.
>
> This way users could bookmark http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/current/threads.html
> (for example) and wouldn't be required to change their bookmark each month,
> as they currently are forced to do.


This could be implemented with a silent redirection, or a filesystem
soft-link.

If it's a soft-link, then you'd have the problem that people would
publish/save URLs pointing in to the "/ml/gcc/current/" directory,
but those URLs would become invalid (or point to incorrect messages)
when the next month started.

If it's a silent redirection, people would never 'stay' on that
page, so they'd never be able to set a bookmark there.

The redirection method (via the Redirect directive in Apache's
httpd.conf) file is viable, except for the limitation that people
would have to add the bookmark by hand (read: few would ever use
it) and a little script goop would need to be added to modify the
server's httpd.conf file and restart the server ever month for
every mailing list.


Jason (not volunteering to do anything, just explaining why the
       easy solution is not implemented :-)