From: Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>
To: Michal Sojka <sojkam1@fel.cvut.cz>, notmuch@notmuchmail.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/4] Mailstore abstraction interface
In-Reply-To: <1270737766-29237-2-git-send-email-sojkam1@fel.cvut.cz>
References: <1270737766-29237-1-git-send-email-sojkam1@fel.cvut.cz>
	<1270737766-29237-2-git-send-email-sojkam1@fel.cvut.cz>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:53:12 -0700
Message-ID: <87aat7kznb.fsf@yoom.home.cworth.org>
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On Thu,  8 Apr 2010 16:42:43 +0200, Michal Sojka <sojkam1@fel.cvut.cz> wrote:
> The goal of mailstore abstraction is to allow notmuch to store tags
> together with email messages. The abstract interface is needed because
> people want to use different ways of storing their emails. Currently,
> there exists implementation for two types of mailstore - plain files
> and maildir. It is expected that additional git-based mailstore will
> be developed later.

I don't agree with the approach being taken here.

I don't think that the expectation of future need is a good basis for
adding a level of abstraction now. This gives us current costs without
benefit.

Meanwhile, the two different mail stores that you are currently support
("plain" and "maildir") aren't really different types. We do already
have code within notmuch to detect whether any particular directory is a
maildir, (with the heuristic of looking for child directories named
"cur", "new", and "tmp"). So I think we can and should support both
maildir and non-maildir mail storage just fine.

The question of "once you have maildir storage, should you synchronize
that tags" is quite separate. The answer there might be "yes", "no", or
"let the user decide". But if it is configurable, then the configuration
should be something like

	[maildir]
	synchronize_flags=yes

rather than

	[mailstore]
	type=maildir

This series is looking like one of the most complete approaches to
maildir-flag synchronization, (and I like some of the motivation that
leads to "notmuch cat"). But I think the mailstore abstraction is
largely a distraction from the real features here.

-Carl

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