Mailing lists
Mailing lists are used for some of the FlightGear community's communications, in particular among the core developers who are working on the flight simulator itself.
Some questions are better asked on the mailing list instead of the forum, especially those related to core development or project infrastructure, but you do not strictly have to be a core developer to subscribe and/or post to the mailing lists.
Overview of mailing lists
Discussion lists
Discussion lists are used by the FlightGear contributor community to discuss work on the FlightGear project.
| List | Status | Contents | Archive | Subscribe | E-mail address | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| flightgear-devel | Active | FlightGear developer discussions | Archive | Subscribe | flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net | Most active list (primary) |
| flightgear-announce | Inactive | FlightGear announcements | Archive | flightgear-announce@lists.sourceforge.net | Last post 2015 | |
| flightgear-bugs | Inactive | Bug tracker messages (no longer for reporting bugs) | Archive | Subscribe | flightgear-bugs@lists.sourceforge.net | Deprecated in favor of the issue tracker. |
| flightgear-flightmodel | Inactive | Flight model discussions | Archive | Subscribe | flightgear-flightmodel@lists.sourceforge.net | Last post 2017. |
| flightgear-newsletter | Inactive | Newsletter announcements and discussions | Archive | Subscribe | flightgear-newsletter@lists.sourceforge.net | Last post 2012 |
| flightgear-scenery | Inactive | Discussion of scenery development: code, tools, GIS data, models, etc. | Archive | Subscribe | flightgear-scenery@lists.sourceforge.net | |
| flightgear-users | Inactive | FlightGear user discussions | Archive | Subscribe | flightgear-users@lists.sourceforge.net | Mostly replaced by the forum |
Automated lists
These mailing lists are not used for discussion, but are intended to provide information for developers about the status of builds and commit activity.
| List | Status | Contents | Archive | Subscribe | E-mail address | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| flightgear-builds | Active | Chatter from the FlightGear build servers | Archive | Subscribe | flightgear-builds@lists.sourceforge.net | |
| flightgear-commitlogs | Active | Source code change commit logs | Archive | Subscribe | flightgear-commmitlogs@lists.sourceforge.net | |
| flightgear-fgaddon-commitlogs | Active | Commit logs for the FGAddon repository (content developers) | Archive | Subscribe | flightgear-fgaddon-commitlogs@lists.sourceforge.net | |
| flightgear-cvslogs | Inactive | CVS commit logs | Archive | flightgear-cvslogs@lists.sourceforge.net | Apparently dismissed. Last post 2010. |
Subscribing to a mailing list
To sign up for one of the above mailing lists, follow these steps:
- Click a Subscribe link in the list above to get to the mailing list subscription form.
- Enter your e-mail address in the Email field.
- Select your country in the Country field.
- Select whether you wish to receive SourceForge Newsletters.
- Agree to the SourceForge Privacy Policy.
- Click the Subscribe button.
- You will be sent a confirmation e-mail, go to your email client and open the confirmation email (check your Spam folder if necessary).
- Click on Confirm Your Subscription.
- This will take you to a SourceForge page confirming that you have successfully joined the mailing list. You can close this tab.
- Afterwards, you will receive a welcome email from SourceForge summarizing the details of your subscription.
Warning SourceForge will send you an auto-generated password in cleartext in the welcome email. This has certain security implications, and it is strongly recommended that you should not re-use this password anywhere else. 
Posting to mailing lists
To protect list subscribers from spam, you are allowed to post there only after you have subscribed, and to send e-mails from the address you are subscribed with.[1] For the same reason, first posts are subject to moderator approval to catch the cases where people sign up for the sole purpose of posting spam.[1]
When posting to the lists, discuss your problem laying it out in as much detail you can and show that you are interested in the problem. If you are willing to work on it will also help, even if it is not related to coding itself. If your discussion is more than just asking for features to be added you have a better chance of getting help and you may find people there who can give you pointers on how to approach your problem. Also, be civil - avoid bringing conflicts or noise.
Keep in mind that getting a response from the lists is usually slower than the forum and that responses may take several days. Should it take more than a week, you might want to probe the interest by responding to your own message; sometimes, there might be no reply as there is none.
Report bugs to the issue tracker
Bugs should preferably be reported to the issue tracker instead of posting them to a mailing list.
You may have to register a SourceForge account first.
Mailing list archives
Searchable archives are available at marc.info. This site allows searching by topic name, searching by content of mailing list posts, browsing each month's topics, and searching by author. It doesn't have a thread view, but it has links to the next and previous posts in each topic thread.
The archives are useful if you want to check or confirm details of some aspect of FG, as there will likely be relevant discussion from when a feature was implemented as well as surrounding design considerations/constraints. They can also be useful for new comers, or to check for information from long ago.
The mailing lists are also searchable from the sourceforge website. Tips: Try searching the relevant mailing list e.g. 'fg-devel', increasing number of results, and click on the post date column to change sorting order from newest to oldest. Each results contains a view entire thread link down the bottom, but as of writing this (April 2021), the thread view is a broken or inconsistent.
External links
References
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