From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.1 (2015-04-28) on dcvr.yhbt.net X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-ASN: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.0 required=3.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,BAYES_00 shortcircuit=no autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.1 Received: from localhost (dcvr.yhbt.net [127.0.0.1]) by dcvr.yhbt.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 72CE71F90A; Fri, 13 Jul 2018 23:07:46 +0000 (UTC) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2018 23:07:46 +0000 From: Eric Wong To: "Eric W. Biederman" Cc: meta@public-inbox.org Subject: IMAP server [was: Q: V2 format] Message-ID: <20180713230746.GA2680@dcvr> References: <87k1q1bky6.fsf@xmission.com> <20180712014715.dn5aouayoa3uejp4@dcvr> <87k1q07dyc.fsf@xmission.com> <20180712230946.mqv3yjw4aabf7xrf@dcvr.yhbt.net> <878t6f1ch7.fsf@xmission.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <878t6f1ch7.fsf@xmission.com> List-Id: "Eric W. Biederman" wrote: > > "Eric W. Biederman" wrote: > >> Eric Wong writes: > > As far as personal mail goes, I wouldn't want serial numbers at all > > (more unnecessary state to keep track of). > > At least imap requires serial numbers, and I imagine the easy transition > for mail clients is to have an imap server. As you have mentioned an > ordered list of commits is good enough to reconstruct the msgnum > reliably so it is unlikely we would need to do anything special there. I would rather layer IMAP (and POP3) on top of NNTP than to tie it to any git/SQLite/Xapian parts in public-inbox. We could ship it with public-inbox, of course; but I don't see why an IMAP or POP3 server could not work by using innd (or similar) as a backend. I don't think any design compromises need to be made to existing the git/SQLite/Xapian parts to support IMAP/POP3. Hosting an IMAP/POP3 server is way more overhead for the admin as it requires storing user credentials and storing per-reader state. So the preference is to do NNTP as well as possible and layer the complexity of per-user account data on top of it. Right now, none of the NNTP/HTTP parts require write access to the machine it runs on aside from log files. Thus the goal is to promote NNTP usage as it's cheapest/easiest for the server admin; but to still have IMAP/POP3 as stopgaps (similar to the ssoma/mlmmj-replay script I use to allow SMTP subscriptions to this inbox).