[Evolution] Re: [Evolution-hackers] mbox

[Alan Shutko <ats acm org>]

Florin Andrei <fandrei1 home com> writes:

> This is why i believe maildir is a better option for the default
> format for Evolution.

Not being on the hacker's list, I don't know whether this is
discussing the default inbox format, or the default folder format.

In any case, please recognize a few problems with the one message per
folder concept.  (This is not to dissuade the notion, as I have ~7344
messages in such a format, but to provide a little info.)

* Most Linux filesystems (as well as most Unix fses) cope poorly with
  directories with lots of entries.  Things get slow.

* Messages are small, and one file/msg will end up wasting lots of
  disk space because you'll have lots of messages using partial
  blocks.  My linux-kernel folder is using 11681792 bytes of disk
  space right now, but the sum of the message sizes is only 8403928.
  This is only the linux-kernel messages since Dec 1... I archive all
  my folders monthly to gzipped mboxes.

Now, machines are fast and disk space cheap, but both disk space and
long directories will get worse as folders get bigger.  Choosing a
default format will have to weigh short-term performance (adding and
deleting recent messages, for instance) vs. long-term performance.

As far as stability, I find maildir-type formats to be more robust in
real use.  It's far too easy for a mbox-reading program to mess up and
end up messing up message separators, or for something to happen when
you have to rewrite a 20MB mailbox since you deleted a message in the
middle.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats acm org> - In a variety of flavors!
No line available at 300 baud.