Re: nnmaildir.el + courier IMAP compatibility patch

[Matt Armstrong <matt@lickey.com>]

prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:

> Matt Armstrong <matt@lickey.com> wrote:
>> By default Courier IMAP expects INBOX to be ~/Maildir/ and any
>> INBOX.subfolder to be ~/Maildir/.subfolder/.  However, if I set up
>> nnmaildir's create-directory to point at ~/Maildir/, it will create
>> new folders without the leading dot (~/Maildir/subfolder/) and Courier
>> IMAP won't find them.
>
> Well, you could create symlinks.  Ah, but there seems to be no
> gnus-make-new-group-hook to do that from.

I tried this, but courier seems to like to have the real directory in
~/Maildir

>> So I added a courier-compatible parameter to the nnmaildir server
>> that causes it to create new maildirs with a leading . in the dir
>> filename (while keeping the Gnus group the same).
>
> I think I'd rather have an arbitrarily configurable prefix, which
> would default to "" and which in your case could be set to ".",
> rather than something unnecessarily tied to a specific other piece
> of software.

Sounds like a good idea.


> I've also been meaning to make it so that create-dir could be ".";
> i.e., the server directory contains the maildirs directly rather
> than symlinks to them.  It seems these features could be related.
> I'll work on it.

Right now I'm using the symlinks to remove the leading '.' from the
maildir directory name.  This way Gnus doesn't think the group name is
.list.ding but rather list.ding.


> I've occasionally thought of writing an IMAP server that would store
> marks in an nnmaildir-compatible way.

I've occasionally thought of going the opposite direction and forking
your nnmaildir.el to be less inode intensive by storing marks using
the "experimental suffix" method described in the maildir spec,
storing overview data as nnml does, etc.  I can say with authority
though that I'll never actually do it.  ;-)


> How does Courier store marks?

With the maildir standard ":2,XYZ" suffixes on the filenames and a
'courierimapuidb' in the root of the maildir that maps IMAP unique ids
to maildir files.  E.g.

    1 1020354007 5
    1 1020345973.27446_0.squeaker
    2 1020346023.27461_0.squeaker
    3 1020346249.27609_0.squeaker
    4 1020346675.27758_0.squeaker

If IMAP has a way to set custom marks (which I vaguely think it does)
I don't know how courier stores them.

-- 
matt