Re: [Evolution] Speed - When?

[Not Zed <notzed ximian com>]

On 15 Mar 2001 19:38:43 +1300, Rob Brown-Bayliss wrote:
> On 15 Mar 2001 15:02:26 +1030, Not Zed wrote:
> > What is?
> >
> > expunging?  expunging should be lots faster.  but are you saying
> > everything else is too?
>
> It seems I jumped the gun a little. thoug it is still faser at loading
> and inexing I guess.
>
> The 3-4 times should be between 1.5 and 2 times faster.  It's dog slow
> importing and then I guess indexing.  I guess because the import is said
> to be complete in the send and recieve window but nothing happens for
> about 1-2 mins then the OK button becomes available.


How much mail are we talking here?  In size as well as message count?

Indexing *is* a big overhead, unfortunately.  It can be turned off, but
only manually at the moment.  I keep forgetting the head version also
doesn't have an ok button anymore it just vanishes by itself.

I dont see why appending mails should be significantly faster using
maildir vs mbox, it anything maildir hits the filesytem more via
directory entries, although i've noticed a slowdown with ext2fs on
mailboxes about 30MB in size.

> Speaking of wiche, would it be possible to have an option to not have
> the send-recieve window open, I for one prefeered it on the status bar
> (thinking thats what a status bar is for).

Well, probably not just in the meantime, but maybe after 1.0.  As I said
above the next rleease it vanishes by itself, so it isn't so annoying.
You can also setup an automatic download in the background and then you
dont have it pop up.

 
> Any way, expunging has been sped up around the same margin as the import
> and index, still I feel to slow considering the specs I have, it's a
> PII300 with 96meg ram.  I say it's to slow as I compare it to my windows
> machine at work, PII300 with 64meg ram running win2k.  Useing outlook I
> can "expunge" mail from a folder in a manner of 2-3 seconds, not 20-30
> seconds that I know have...  


Uh, but you're expunging to a remote folder right?  Can't really be
compared.

How big is the message list?  Long lists of messages also have a big hit
just from the stupid table widget we have, which has nothing to do with
the backend storage mechanism (and possibly why it compares so slow).

> Cant comment on the import as we use exchage...  Thinking about it this
> could be the problem, it'e really the server deleteing the mail, and
> jsut telling outlook top remove it from the list isin't it.


Expunge on mbox is THE slow operation in mbox, but the only one.  Of
course its going to be slower than maildir or a database system.

> Still, why cant evo do the same?  Why does the whole programme have to
> be held u p for an import and expunge, just have the engine do it in the


It isn't all held up, only that folder is held up, and that can't be
changed particularly for mbox, where it needs to lock the whole folder,
and not just messages within it (like say, maildir can).

> back ground.  Remove all the expunged mail form the list, delete it for
> real, and then if there is a problem, put it back intop the list and pop
> up a little message window...  In situations where things go wrong this
> is not the ideal (removing then putting back) but how often will thinkgs
> go wrong while expunging from a local mail box?  Maybe more often for a
> pop or imap but still not that offten I gues...


Yeah well, maybe we can get fancy later, but right now we're just trying
to get a basic mailer up and running and stable.  There's really only 3
of us working fulltime on the mailer, and there's just not enough hands
to do everything.