[Dovecot] what is the current state

[Eric S. Johansson]

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