Re: maildir and gnus

[Wes Hardaker <wes@hardakers.net>]

Erik Colson <eco@ecocode.net> writes:

> So I finally installed the thing: mbsync / dovecot / nnimap
> 
> Still some issues but not speed actually.

Adding my past few years experience:

1. I went from using nnimap to offlineimap->maildir folders a large
number of years ago.  It worked generally well, allowed easy offline
support (better than offline mode somewhat).  NOV files would build up
though, so I built a script to clean them.  After large quantities of
time (order 2-5 years), it did seem to get slower and slower (probably
from id number lists expanding, but that's a guess).

Anyway, with a recent desktop that no longer moves around I moved it
back to nnimap and its *much* faster than my previous offlineimap
method.  I don't mean just for the transfer though.  I tried mbsync and
got it working, but for some reason nnimap is faster in most respects.
Gnus scanning nnmaildir directories took probably 5-10 times longer than
nnimap when fetching new mail.

Also, another downside of offline/mbsync -> maildir is that it marks
everything as "not new" on the server because you are in fact pulling it
by pulling it (ok, I assume this is true for mbsync -- I didn't verify
that).  There is probably a way to hack the new flag back on the imap
side, but I never tried.  With nnimap, the new flag remains correct and
thus other clients or biff-like utilities continue to work properly.

</ramble>

-- 
Wes Hardaker                                     
My Pictures:       http://photos.capturedonearth.com/