Re: Why Gnus is creating .nnmaildir directory in my maildir?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> * Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> [2021-04-13 19:08]:
>> The nnmaildir backend uses the .nnmaildir directory to store cached
>> headers and other information about your maildir messages, for faster
>> retrieval. Many people don't like this, and/or would prefer more
>> configurability, but at the moment there's no way around it. For now you
>> can tell notmuch to ignore that path with the "new.ignore" option in
>> your notmuch config.
>
> That is terribly flawed design that does not work. Maildir messages
> are files, it is quite easy to read subjects, headers when directory
> is listed within short time.
>
> What Gnus does to Maildir is abuse to user's data hard disk as there
> is no warning about it.

No need to argue with me about it! But I will note that plenty of GUI
mail clients keep their own cache/data in something like a sqlite
database, alongside the actual message store. nnmaildir is unusable for
large maildirs because it tries to build the entire cache the first time
it is run, and that happens in quadratic time. If you start a new
nnmaildir installation from nothing, and add messages at a "normal"
rate, it's not that bad.