public-index-{watch,mda}

public-index-{watch,mda}

[Jonathan Corbet]

I have a question on public-index-watch v. public-index-mda; sending to
the list since I might not be the only one.  I've seen a couple of times
that you recommend public-index-watch for maintaining a mirror of a
mailing list whose home is elsewhere.  But I would rather use
public-inbox-mda since that doesn't require keeping a duplicate maildir
around that's just wasted space.

So I'm wondering: is there a reason *not* to use public-inbox-mda for this
use case beyond the rather aggressive filtering that it does?  If not,
would you entertain a patch to make that filtering optional?

Thanks,

jon

Re: public-index-{watch,mda}

[Eric Wong]

Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> wrote:
> I have a question on public-index-watch v. public-index-mda; sending to
> the list since I might not be the only one.  I've seen a couple of times
> that you recommend public-index-watch for maintaining a mirror of a
> mailing list whose home is elsewhere.  But I would rather use
> public-inbox-mda since that doesn't require keeping a duplicate maildir
> around that's just wasted space.

I've been thinking along the same lines.  For now:

	find $MAILDIR -type f -ctime +1 | xargs rm -f

is reasonably good at not removing files.

> So I'm wondering: is there a reason *not* to use public-inbox-mda for this
> use case beyond the rather aggressive filtering that it does?  If not,
> would you entertain a patch to make that filtering optional?

The big reason is -watch is safer in case of bugs in our code and
can recover with readdir scans (instead of bouncing and making
other mail admins unhappy).

I also expect -watch to be more useful for people who do not run
their own MTA.


I'm open to accepting patches to make -mda more configurable and
perhaps being able to share configuration with -watch; but the
defaults need to remain for compatibility.

I think time would be better spent giving -watch an optional new
feature which provides the following three options:

1) move-to-another-Maildir-on-import

2) mark-message-as-trash-on-import (add 'T' to filename flag)

3) unlink-on-successful-import (needs to be delayed
   until fast-import is done writing (im->checkpoint or im->done)

Thanks.