Re: [Evolution-hackers] Moving from the single mbox file format for the local folders

[Srinivasa Ragavan <sragavan gnome org>]

Hello everyone,

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Chenthill <pchenthill novell com> wrote:
> Hi fellow hackers!!
>    I have been working for a while during last week on one the blockers
> in evolution - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550414 -
> 'Folder and summary mismatch error'(old one -
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213072). As a matter of fact
> we have been working as a team to get the blockers down. I have not been
> able to reproduce the issue or yet find the exact problematic area.
>
>        The mismatch in the frompos index in the folder summary may be caused
> by either a threading issue or a crash while storing the indexes. I am
> still investigating it to find the real cause.
>
>        Looking at other issues such as,
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=522433 - 'Fails opening mbox
>> 2GB', just got a thought if we could solve both the issues by,
>
> Approach #1,
> migrating local storage from mbox to maildir format. With maildir I have
> heard about two issues,
>
> * Not able to create subfolders under INBOX -
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=536240 .
>
> Approach #2,
> Migrate from a single mbox file per folder to mbox per email. Srini
> mentioned an advantage that this would avoid the file renames that
> maildir does. I think this is much like how other remote providers in
> evo store the email.

It should be rocket fast!. Expunge is just unlink one file. Change of
flags etc rewrites just that file when upsync happens. No rewrite 2gb
of a file, to expunge 10 mails. Startup/shutdown faster etc etc. I'm a
fan of this, what so ever! To overcome 100K mbox files in one folder,
distribute under multi-level subdirs and let summary know that.

>
> I thought of bring this in this list to gather more opinions to choose
> the right one. The approach #2 seems a better one as we are choosing a
> way for storing the messages internally in evo. Are we missing to see
> anything while we choose the second one ?
>
> One advantage which I see with #1 is that its a standard way.

You store everything as mbox only still. But one mbox file per mail,
distributed in multiple subdirs. Ofcourse you dont want 100K files in
one folder, which could move the bottleneck to a different place.
Distribute under multi-level subfolders or something like that.

-Srini