Re: inbox/unread tags for new messages [was: Re: Thoughts on notmuch and Lua]

[Jameson Rollins <jrollins@finestructure.net>]

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On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 06:33:17PM -0800, Carl Worth wrote:
> I have thousands of messages that I have read with sup and notmuch. The
> filenames have never changed since the mail was originally delivered by
> maildrop. So these messages are all in "new" directories, do not have
> the 'S' flag in the filename, and do not have an "unread" tag.
> 
> So the database and the filesystem are currently inconsistent and
> neither of the above state changes will trigger for any of these
> messages.
> 
> Things "work" fine for me now because I'm treating the database state as
> authoritative and ignoring the names of the files. Your proposal is to
> treat the filenames as authoritative, so will require an additional
> step, (to copy the current state from the database to the file names),
> besides what you've outlineed above.

I guess my take on this is that notmuch is a mail processing program
with nominal support for maildir, and should therefore be following
the maildir specification.  I wouldn't say this necessarily means that
the filesystem is "authoritative", just that the specification is
being followed.  I could also see notmuch punting on that and just
offering something that indexes messages stored in individual,
uniquely named files.

I can definitely see, though, that switching to fully following the
maildir spec would require a bit more work and a transition.  My
personal opinion is that notmuch should follow the maildir
specification.  It would definitely facilitate interoperability with
other MTAs and MUAs that do properly follow the maildir specification.

jamie.

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