[Dovecot] Envelope From changed - why?

[Tom Alsberg]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 09:48:31PM +0300, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-04-27 at 15:53, Tom Alsberg wrote:
> > That's what I mean - when the IMAP COPY command is issued, the From_
> > line should be copied together with the rest of the actual message.
> 
> I don't think I'll want to do the copying exactly,

That's a shame...  Any tips, though, on how I could change it in the
least ugly-hackish way?  (I'd like to see and know in order to
understand the internal architecture of dovecot anyway, even if you
are soon to implement it with the read and save API into the
mainstream code track)

> as the way COPY currently works is "read message" and "save
> message", although maildir has special code for hardlink-copying. I
> don't think mbox really deserves that..

Well, OK... Not sure why, though - I'd think this would be a small
piece of code specific to mbox (if done right), and would warrant a
special case.

> However, I could change read and save APIs so that the "envelope from"
> can be read and written. With maildir reading would give NULL, and
> writing would just ignore it. With mbox it would work right though, and
> if it's NULL it'd do what it does now.

Sounds like a good idea.  I'd also think of trying to base on
Return-Path: if it's NULL when writing to an mbox, before dropping to
inventing a completely fabricated one, but that's just an added
bonus...

Any idea as to when I could expect to have this implemented in
dovecot?  (I'd love to help with it, given some guidance)

Main question in my mind now about the code:  What data is kept in the
context of a message, except for the istream pointing to the contents?
(As in - where would you insert that "envelope from" field?  Would it
just be a parameter to the functions, or would it be some field in the
data structure representing a message?)

I understood that in the current development dovecot, mbox support
doesn't even work anymore...  I do hope that'll be fixed when it
becomes the current stable branch.

I must say that until now I really like dovecot, being the best IMAP
server I've found until now (most suitable to my needs, but also clean
and flexible, functioning well...).  Hopefully mbox support won't just
be dropped at some point, as it is important for me, and I believe for
other users as well. 

I understood the direction of development right now is into making
dovecot as modular as feasible, so maybe even if mbox support won't be
in the main dovecot code, it could be an external module (with a clean
enough API, I could even write and maintain an mbox module)

Thank you, Timo, and the rest of the dovecot developers, for all the
efforts into this neat piece of software :-)

  Thanks again,
  -- Tom

-- 
  Tom Alsberg - hacker (being the best description fitting this space)
  Web page:	http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~alsbergt/
DISCLAIMER:  The above message does not even necessarily represent what
my fingers have typed on the keyboard, save anything further.