Re: Unexpected output of "notmuch new --quiet"

[Eric <eric@deptj.eu>]

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On Sat, 20 Apr 2019 01:46:30 +0200, Ralph Seichter <abbot@monksofcool.net> wrote:
> * Daniel Kahn Gillmor:
> 
> > as far as maildir goes, i think notmuch probably *shouldn't* be
> > looking at stuff in …/tmp/ -- right?
> 
> You're right, I don't see why Notmuch would peek into "tmp".
> 
> > I'd be sad if those files went away, but perhaps you're right that
> > we should only be looking at are things within any cur/ and new/
> > subfolders within the message archive.
> 
> I don't mean to reduce Notmuch usability to get rid of a few unwanted
> messages on stderr. What I suggest is to consider all files outside of
> "cur" and "new" to be legitimate non-mail files by default. If Notmuch
> chooses to inspect them and detects valid messages, then fine, but the
> default assumption should be non-mail.

I suppose that having a configuration item to make notmuch do what it
does now if the default behaviour is changed isn't an enormous usability
reduction, but I still don't like it, and I would be very wary of assuming
that the necessary changes to the code will be as simple as it sounds.

> Think about how the files get there. You manually dumping some *.eml
> files in a directory is not exactly typical, IMO. ;-)

I think that there will be lots of people (and organisations) who get
collections of email from elsewhere and want to add them all to their
own single collection for reference, archival, and research purposes.

> I expect that in the majority of cases there is some MTA or fetchmail-like
> process storing mail files in a Maildir structure (flat, tree, or mixed
> like Dovecot does).

So that those emails would be forced into the IMAP folder structure,
making them visible (and possible distracting) there when viewed with
a traditional mail client?

> I think that altering Notmuch's expectations about files outside of
> well-known subdirectories should be possible without sacrificing its
> flexibility.

No, because that is part of its flexibility. Removing, or degrading,
notmuch's ability to access such files will mean that I may be looking
for a different solution to managing my email. That, of course, amy not
matter much to anyone else, but how many others will there be?

Eric
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