Re: nnimap does not create non-existent groups on expiry (lost mail)

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

Nevin Kapur <nevin@jhu.edu> writes:

> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
>
>> In theory it is the right thing, but various IMAP server bugs make the
>> TRYCREATE stuff unreliable, so with your patch I believe nnimap would
>> have sent a CREATE command for every expired article (which would have
>> failed in the normal case).  Does the following work instead?  It also
>> has the feature that no articles are expired if the group could not be
>> created.  
>
> I applied your patch, but I don't think it does the right thing.
> Isn't it trying to create the (already existing) group from where the
> function is being called rather than the target given by
> nnmail-expiry-target?

Oops!  Right.

> I took a stab at modifying the patch but ran into some difficulties.
> I'm not sure if one should check for the existence of the target group
> in the function nnimap-expiry-target when it is possible that
> nnmail-expiry-target returns a non-nnimap group.
>
> Is it better to move the check inside nnimap-request-accept-article?

I think it is more appropriate in nnmail-expiry-target-group.  What do
the nnmail experts say?  Perhaps we can document this so it isn't a
problem in the future:

   Is nnfoo-request-accept-article supposed to create the group if it
   does not exists, or is that up to the caller?

The answer should go into the manual, I think.