Mark E. Mallett wrote:
On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 01:35:46PM -0400, Eric S. Johansson wrote:
seriously, on mbox, the best thing we can do is to provide minimal support (i.e. reliable and it works no worse than uw) and make maildir transition as trivial as possible (i.e. switch mbox to maildir on first write).
I would not consider that to be the best thing. I'm not interested in having our mboxes converted automatically to maildirs. We have systems where each is used, and enviromnents where both are used, by choice.
I think we're in more agreement than not. Like you, I would not want them to be converted automatically. That is *unless* I set configuration to convert them automatically. mbox accesse is never going to be fast or efficient. If it was possible to make mbox access faster, it would be because enough bright people have thought about the problem to find a solution if there was one. I'm not saying there isn't an undiscovered magic option like marking a message as replaced, writing an updated copy to the end of the file, and sorting out the order at read time. Only that it's highly unlikely.
the reason I advocate automatic conversion is that the process is usually painful and error prone when it does not need to be. Someone should be able to turn on dovecot and have the conversion happen automatically and feel confident that they will be able to get their e-mail quickly and reliably.
---eric