Re: [Evolution] Re: [Evolution-hackers] mbox

[Florin Andrei <fandrei1 home com>]

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

        Ummm... both. :-)

> In any case, please recognize a few problems with the one message per
> folder concept.

        That's "one message per file" not per folder.

> (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.

        Yes, this is true. It's the biggest disadvantage of maildir. Something like a
tree structure would be much suitable (like most caching proxies do).
        However, there are, at least on Linux, several new filesystems emerging. I
worked with ReiserFS, and it seems to be much, i mean *much* more suitable to
work with very populated directories. Tens of thousands of files per dir -
that's piece of cake for ReiserFS, i've tried and it was no problem. Of
course, with Ext2, you get a hell of a loss of performance if you do that.
        Well, right now most of the people out there are using Ext2. However, Qmail
and other e-mail software is using maildir on Ext2, and they are just fine.

> * 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.

        Again, ReiserFS is using a new way of storing small files, so the space is
not lost.

        Now, i understand that right now Ext2 is the filesystem of choice. But in the
future, its limitations will most likely dissapear. Thinking about the future,
it appears that maildir will do better.

> 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.

        This is my opinion too.

-- 
Florin Andrei
mailto:florin linuxstart com
http://members.linuxstart.com/~florin/
"I trust Linus over BIOS vendors, every single time" - Alan Cox