Bug in IDLE implementation for virtual mailbox

[Pali Rohár]

On Monday 17 December 2018 10:50:16 Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On 17 Dec 2018, at 10.44, Pali Rohár <pali.rohar at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > On Sunday 16 December 2018 21:55:23 Timo Sirainen wrote:
> >> On 16 Dec 2018, at 21.26, Pali Rohár <pali.rohar at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> 
> >>> Hello!
> >>> 
> >>> I found bug in Dovecot's IDLE implementation when virtual mailbox is in
> >>> use. IDLE does not notify about new emails when email appears in newly
> >>> created mailbox and IDLE was issued in virtual folder which matches "*"
> >>> wildcard and that mailbox was created after opening virtual mailbox.
> >> 
> >> It actually has nothing to do with IDLE specifically. It's just that the virtual storage code doesn't try to look for new folders after the virtual mailbox is opened.
> >> 
> >>> To get notifications, it is needed to re-open that "All" mailbox again.
> >> 
> >> Right. I don't think this is going to be fixed anytime soon. Quite a lot of effort and it can be worked around.
> > 
> > How to workaround it? Imap clients uses either IDLE or STATUS or LIST
> > (with STATUS) commands for checking if there is a new messages.
> > 
> > But none of these commands reports existence of new message until that
> > virtual folder is re-opened.
> 
> I mean, workaround is for the user to just reopen the folder. I think it's not very common for this situation to happen and cause problems?

My setup is that I have sieve filters to put emails from mailing lists,
bugzilla/github/gitlab/... and other projects into separate own mailbox,
based on email headers which these services provides.

So once I get email from new bugzilla, github or gitlab project, then
sieve automatically creates a new mailbox for it. And this happen every
time when I e.g. add a new comment to bugzilla project into which I have
not commented yet.

I'm having permanently opened mutt email client in tmux/screen on "All"
virtual folder to see all new emails.

And basically above bug cause problems in this scenario as I would not
see new emails.

I can re-open "All" mailbox, but first I need to know that new email was
received. And for this I'm using mutt IDLing in All virtual folder.

So it is like chicken and egg problem.

-- 
Pali Rohár
pali.rohar at gmail.com