noob maildir question

[dovecot at ptld.com]

> I would like to ask if it is an acceptable practice to manage messages in the maildir as a file (move them from one folder to another) while dovecot is in stop state thinking that it will be rebuild to the next imap user login 


Acceptable? That is subjective. It is your system. Big difference in what you can get away with on a small personal server vs being gmail. Only you know what is acceptable or not on your server.

Mechanically possible, i believe so. Dovecot documentation in multiple places mentions how indexes are always rebuilt as needed. You can even have a setup where your MTA places new messages in folders without going through dovecot. When dovecot "finds" the file it just indexes it. So sure, i dont see why not, just keep in mind the overhead (if any) added by re-indexing.