Is atomic MOVING of messages between IMAP folders possible?

[Greg Sullivan]

Thanks Timo, and no, I can't (easily) change the code of the client.

I must say I am extremely disappointed that intra-account moves are not
atomic. As far as I can tell, IMAP was designed to allow shared access, so
in my opinion this operation should be atomic.  Heaven FORBID that I should
ask for entire conversation moves to be atomic as well. (which is really
what I want)

Looks like a bloatware - sorry - helpdesk system - is what I will need to
use.

Greg.


On 4 August 2014 22:44, Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> wrote:

> On 04 Aug 2014, at 14:12, Greg Sullivan <greg.sullivan at sullivang.net>
> wrote:
>
> > Yes, both client and server support IMAP MOVE, and both also support
> > CONDSTORE.
> >
> > I have tried both with and without CONDSTORE enabled in the client, with
> > the same result.
>
> With CONDSTORE I was thinking you could do it something like:
>
> 1 FETCH 1 (FLAGS MODSEQ)
> * 1 FLAGS () MODSEQ 12345
> 2 STORE (UNCHANGEDSINCE 12345) 1 +FLAGS $AtomicMove
> 3 MOVE 1 elsewhere
>
> If another client attempts the same, either 1 will return $AtomicMove in
> flags -> abort or 2 will fail with NO. But you should still handle failures
> if the client/connection dies between 2 and 3 or 3 fails for some reason.
>
> But, of course if you can't change the client code to do this then it
> doesn't help.
>
> > I am very confident IMAP MOVE is actually being invoked, because
> > intra-account moves occur extremely rapidly. (much faster than
> > inter-account moves, which of course is a copy & delete)
>
> Inter-account physically copies the data (FETCH + APPEND + EXPUNGE).
> Alternative to MOVE is COPY + EXPUNGE, which is just as fast as MOVE.
> Dovecot actually implements MOVE by internally doing a COPY + EXPUNGE.
>
>