Re: is nnmaildir very slow?

[Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk>]

On Saturday, 18 May 2019 at 06:53, George Clemmer wrote:
> In my experience, as long as I kept Emacs running the performance was
> great and ~ to Mu4E. The hit was only associated with an Emacs restart.

Yes, this agrees with my experience.  But as I do use three systems each
day, I do have to start up Emacs several times and the delay each time
is rather annoying.

I've solved the problem by expiring more (archiving) and splitting more
creatively so as to keep my inbox small.

>> I use gnus on three different systems: home, mobile device (Gemini PDA),
>> and office, using unison to synchronize all files between the three
>> systems.
>
> Cool! Would you recommend the Gemini?

Difficult to say.  I really like it but I'm waiting impatiently for the
Pyra.  The issue is that the Gemini is fragile when it comes to Debian
as it was really intended as an Android device.  I do have the Linux-fu
necessary to keep it going okay but I do have some wariness in
recommending it more generally.  The Pyra, however, will be Debian from
top to bottom so should be robust as was the OpenPandora it is replacing
(and which I used for years).

>> So maybe it's something to do with how my files are
>> synchronized.  Unison is being asked to synchronize .newsrc.eld and the
>> Maildir (& Mail & News) directories.
>
> How well does that work? Are all your Gnus marks really keep in sync? I
> would think marks would get jumbled if the systems receive mail
> independently.

That's one of the reasons for using nnmaildir: downloading emails on
different systems does not cause problems with synchronization.  I've
not had gnus get confused (yet).  But that may be why nnmaildir is so
slow on start-up.

thanks,
eric

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.2.3 on Debian buster/sid