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

[Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com>]

On Wed, 2009-12-16 at 01:25 +0530, Srinivasa Ragavan wrote:
> 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'm liking this idea too.

Did you have a scheme in mind for how to partition the mbox files into
subdirectories?  One possibility might be to use a similar approach as
CamelDataCache.  That is, take the last two (or three?) digits of the
MD5 checksum of the Message-ID and file the message into a subdirectory
of that name.  That should give you a relatively even distribution and
the mbox file can be easily be located once you have its Message-ID.

Also, we should be careful about using the word "standard" when talking
about mbox and Maildir.  Neither of these formats are standardized, and
in fact variations abound among mailer programs.  Certainly we should be
able to export messages to these formats, however we decide to store
them internally.

Matthew Barnes