>1. I'm looking for an estimate of how long it will take to migrate our
>existing 1.7-based LISTSERV to Version 1.8b.
 
The bulk of my time migrating to a new release is spent taking Eric's more
comprehensive release notes and reworking them into little snippets that
our listowners are more likely to relate to.  The migration itself takes
mere minutes, unless you count the time it take for me to back-up the old
stuff.  Not that I've ever had to back out.
 
The conversion from 1.7f to 1.8x might take a little while though, since
MAILFORM files are now MAILTPL files which are in a slightly different
format. I wrote a Q&D XEDIT macro to take care of the bulk of the change.
 
Another thing that bit us from 1.8a to 1.8b is that the ADDREQ1 template
by default no longer is sent to the subscriber (we were running a beta
version so didn't have the release notes yet to warn us of this.)
 
>2. Are there any backward compatible issues that we need to be aware of?
 
The lists returned by a GET command in 1.8b may not be backward compatible
with earlier versions since subscriber options, once altered, are represented
differently in 1.8b.
 
>3. I've seen mention of some nice tools to use to assist in setting up
>the configuration of LISTSERV.  Anyone have any suggestions such as ones
>which provide a menu-driven input screen from which the manager can set the
>various settings?
 
I personally don't see much value in this for LISTSERV system configuration
but, OK, I'm probably just a conservative oldster.  I mean, it's mostly in
LOCAL SYSVARS and it's explained pretty well in there.
 
Bill Gruber
LISTSERV maintainer
City University of New York Computer Center