Creating users on the fly, for testing?

I'm trying to set up a reproducible test environment for a MUA I'm working on, with accounts and dummy data that can be trashed and restored while testing.

I'd like to exercise the IMAP client part of the MUA, and am looking into using a local dovecot instance to do that.

I'm trying to make this as minimal-config as possible: ideally the test environment could create a dummy (virtual) user, insert dummy message data, allow the MUA to log in and manipulate the messages, and then destroy both user and message data at the end of the session.

I have the sense that I'll be able to get there by shipping a custom config file along with the test library, that sets up a virtual user with a mail_location under /tmp, and then all operations are done with

dovecot -c customconfig.conf

Then the temp folder is trashed at the end of the session.

Is this likely to work? Is anything likely to bite me?

Thanks, Eric