Re: [Evolution-hackers] Introduction and Questions

[Ross Boylan <ross biostat ucsf edu>]

On Thu, 2007-05-31 at 14:10 -0400, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote: 
> On Thu, 2007-05-31 at 07:58 -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> > Hi.  I've been getting into the code of evolution recently, and am thinking of 
> > doing a bit more to see if I can get it working OK for my situation.  I have 
> > an IMAP mailbox which is very large, both in terms of folders (over 100) and 
> > messages (the largest folder has >300,000 messages; my INBOX has about 
> > 22,000).
> 
> the largest INBOX I've ever used was about ~100,000 messages, so you may
> get to have some fun :)
> 
> > 
> > None of the email clients I've tried cope with this very well.  Since I've 
> > been using evo at work in a similar setup (cyrus server, though not quite as 
> > big), I thought it might be the best to try to tweak.  The problems I've had 
> > so far involve setup activities rather than core functionaility.  First, 
> > evolution couldn't create the account (solved); second I've had problems 
> > getting it to show all of my subfolders.
> 
> are they in different namespaces? Current evo IMAP provider doesn't
> handle multiple namespaces :(
Single namespace.  It's all INBOX.folder.subfolder.
The one wrinkle is that in some cases 'folder' exists in the namespace,
but is not an actual box or folder (whatever the right term is) on the
server: INBOX.folder.subfolder is a real folder; INBOX.folder is not.
> 
> > 
> > My narrow question is how to debug evolution.  When I launched evolution in 
> > gdb evolution (the GUI) came up, and then the debugger told me the process 
> > had exited (though the GUI was up and running).  I believe the initial 
> > process does some kind of activation of the "real" process and then exits.
> 
> sounds like you already had an instance of Evolution running (on another
> virtual desktop perhaps?)
I'm pretty sure I shut everything down.  Hmm, I just tried again and
this time I'm still in the debugger.

There was another instance of evolution running, but for a different
user.  That instance is in a funny state, because it is not visible in
the other user's screen.

Running under KDE in all cases.
> 
....
> 
> > 
> > Mission Advisable?  If I get past the setup hurdles, is evolution likely to be 
> > able to handle the mail store I described?
> 
> I think it'll be possible, there's lots of improvement that can be made
> to the current imap code :)
I'm hoping it will be tolerable without improvements :)  I think one of the main factors will be whether evo 
tries to get all the headers from each folder it operates on.  Even if it does, if it only does it once
and is otherwise responsive I'll be doing better than what I have now.

At work, I think my biggest folder has about 85k messages, and evo is working fine.
> 
> > 
> > How do I find out which of the imap store's code I'm actually using?
> 
> you are probably using the provider in
> evolution-data-server/camel/providers/imap
Is the other not loaded, or does it depend on which option I picked for the server (I said IMAP4rev1).

Thanks to everyone for the quick replies.  Not having a functional email client is a big problem. 
I used to archive off my mail when it got to be too much.  I thought it would be more convenient to have it
consolidated under IMAP since, as a practical matter, once I archived the stuff it became invisible.  So far,
it's not so convenient!

So far, I have tried
evolution
kmail (using it for now)
thunderbird/icedove
mulberry
Apple's mail app
claws
mutt

-- 
Ross Boylan                                      wk:  (415) 514-8146
185 Berry St #5700                               ross biostat ucsf edu
Dept of Epidemiology and Biostatistics           fax: (415) 514-8150
University of California, San Francisco
San Francisco, CA 94107-1739                     hm:  (415) 550-1062