Re: Relationship between public-inbox and ssoma?

[Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>]

Nicolás Ojeda Bär <n.oje.bar@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Thanks very much for this great project.
> 
> I am a bit puzzled about the difference between public-inbox and ssoma. In particular:
> 
> - What is the difference between public-inbox-mda and ssoma-mda ?

public-inbox-mda is more suitable for public endpoints where
it's the primary entry point for a publically-shared mail.
ssoma-mda is/was intended for personal mail.  Originally,
public-inbox depended on and used ssoma, but that was given up
for more performance.

Sidenote: I don't recommend public-inbox-mda for running
_mirrors_ of existing mailing lists since it's stricter than
what most lists accept.  public-inbox-watch is more lenient and
more performant (on Linux with inotify, at least); so I wrote
it for mirroring.

> - Are the git repository formats the same for public-inbox and ssoma ?

Currently they are the same with one exception: ssoma allows two
different messages (different blob SHA-1) to have the same
Message-Id by default; public-inbox (current version) does not.
(ssoma-mda has a "-1" option to disable duplicate Message-Id).

The work-in-progress "v2" public-inbox format diverges and I
don't currently have plans to port ssoma to use it.  The v1
format will remain supported in public-inbox.

I'm not sure if ssoma is worth the effort any more, as it's too
much effort to promote a new sync protocol (even if based on
git).  I'd rather improve NNTP servers and clients as an option
for people to read public inboxes.

> Any comments appreciated.
> 
> Thanks a lot!

No problem, thanks for your interest.