Is atomic MOVING of messages between IMAP folders possible?

[Steffen Kaiser]

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> Quoting Greg Sullivan <greg.sullivan at sullivang.net>:
>
>> I was gobsmacked when I discovered that duplicates could easily occur!

"move" is not atomic in a filesystem either. Under circumstances it has to 
be implemented by "cp && rm". Unless you protect the move's source by 
locking - as Timo suggested with the message at Tue, 5 Aug 2014 21:19:46 - 
the same duplication can occur.

In your reply you've wrote: "Heaven FORBID that I should ask for entire 
conversation moves to be atomic as well. (which is really what I want)" 
Actually you want to use database-like transactions for IMAP commands or 
sessions.

Actually, what should happen _during_ the MOVE, if another client queries 
for the source message or launches commands on it? Now, for a short period 
of time the copy takes the message is available at the source location 
only, then it disappears if the move was successful.
IMHO, you could write a plugin that monitors or wraps "MOVE" commands and 
denies second simultaneous move attempts. In a way, that plugin would do 
the locking Timo suggested as a server-side implementation.
How many simultaneous MOVE do you expect? Maybe you could lock the source 
mailbox wholly during a move.

- -- 
Steffen Kaiser
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