From: David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
To: Gregor Zattler <telegraph@gmx.net>, notmuch <notmuch@notmuchmail.org>
Subject: Re: Bug: notmuch new chokes on dangling symlinks and quits
In-Reply-To: <20140127011427.GD10844@boo.workgroup>
References: <20140126131846.GA10844@boo.workgroup>
	<878uu2n17j.fsf@zancas.localnet> <20140127011427.GD10844@boo.workgroup>
User-Agent: Notmuch/0.17+53~g3e1d7f6 (http://notmuchmail.org) Emacs/24.3.1
	(x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 13:40:14 -0400
Message-ID: <878uu1l3wh.fsf@zancas.localnet>
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Gregor Zattler <telegraph@gmx.net> writes:

> Hi David,
> * David Bremner <david@tethera.net> [26. Jan. 2014]:
>> Gregor Zattler <telegraph@gmx.net> writes:
>>> I consider this to be a bug.  Instead notmuch should simply
>>> ignore the symlink.
>>>
>> 
>> Since there is a test for specifically this behaviour, I'd have to say
>> it's a design decision you don't agree with, not a bug ;).
>
> May I ask why this is so?
>

Purely from memory (I wasn't involved, and didn't dig up the the
discussion):

- a common use case is linking different trees into one notmuch-index
  tree.

- if a subtree disappears (e.g. by a network failure), then the choices
  are stop the index or ignore the missing files.

- in the latter case, all tags from "deleted" messages are lost

So, a simple solution which avoids data loss is to abort the index
process.

A more complicated solution would be possible of course, but nobody
proposed it (or more importantly, did it) yet.

d