[Dovecot] Configuration file changes in CVS

[Mark E. Mallett]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 02:31:44PM -0400, Charlie Brady wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2003, Mark E. Mallett wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 05:52:08PM +0300, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> > > 
> > > mbox is fine as long as you don't want to delete messages. It's perfect
> > > for read-only mailing list archives.
> > 
> > Indeed.  mbox is fine for some people and some things, and in fact
> > for archived mboxes Maildir can just be a big waste.
> > 
> > It is nice to be open to well-established storage formats.  Bear in
> > mind that there are people who refuse to use Maildir formats too.
> 
> Sure, but that doesn't mean that such people *must* be catered for by 
> every imap daemon. Trying to keep everybody happy pretty much guarantees 
> that nobody will be completely happy.

I buy that too- but we're not talking about some fringe format.
As a somewhat related comment, I originally gravitated towards
dovecot because it supported {imap,pop}{Maildir,mbox} using one
code base and one tool.  While there are things to be said for using
multiple tools for multiple things, it's nice to have one motif and
one philosophy behind access to a set of mailboxex.

But yeah, catering to every little new format often detracts from
the whole.  (That's where plug-ins are useful.)


> Back to the topic, I'd rather there wasn't a configuration file at all.
> I've got very used to Dan Berstein/Bruce Guenter software where 
> environment variables and command line arguments are the only 
> configuration.

I also agree here- that kind of control is nice for some things,
particularly when those things are simple boolean switches
(enable/disable), and especially when it makes sense to control those
things at runtime on a discrete basis.  However note "environment
variables and command line arguments only" is not necessarily the
philosophy for djb's stuff (I'm afraid I have no experience with the
other).  qmail, for example, has a raft of control files that, well,
control its operation.

And sometimes more complex configurations do make sense, for example
for where encapsulations of multiple settings are common.

-mm-