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+From: Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>\r
+To: Mark Anderson <ma.skies@gmail.com>, Pieter Praet <pieter@praet.org>,\r
+ Robin Green <greenrd@greenrd.org>, notmuch@notmuchmail.org\r
+Subject: Re: Race condition for '*' command\r
+In-Reply-To: <87tyb9j1th.fsf@gmail.com>\r
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+ <87fwmuxxgd.fsf@praet.org> <87tyb9j1th.fsf@gmail.com>\r
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+Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:48:26 -0700\r
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+\r
+--=-=-=\r
+Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable\r
+\r
+On Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:36:10 -0600, Mark Anderson <ma.skies@gmail.com> wrot=\r
+e:\r
+> On Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:49:06 +0200, Pieter Praet <pieter@praet.org> wrote:\r
+> > On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 10:00:41 +0100, Robin Green <greenrd@greenrd.org> w=\r
+rote:\r
+> > > On Sat, 25 Jun 2011 16:57:50 -0700, Jameson Graef Rollins <jrollins@f=\r
+inestructure.net> wrote:\r
+> > > > On Sat, 25 Jun 2011 23:18:52 +0100, Robin Green <greenrd@greenrd.or=\r
+g> wrote:\r
+> > > > > A race condition in the '*' command was noted when it was first\r
+> > > > > proposed. It looks to me like it still exists - has anything been=\r
+ done\r
+> > > > > about it?\r
+\r
+Not much. I did add this note to notmuch/TODO at the time:\r
+\r
+ Fix '*' to work by simply calling '+' or '-' on a region\r
+ consisting of the entire buffer\r
+\r
+> > Could be solved by doing it with `notmuch-search', `mark-whole-buffer'\r
+> > and `notmuch-search-{add,remove}-tag-region' instead, but I'm sure\r
+> > there's a better way (of which I'm as of yet unaware).\r
+\r
+That's a more concrete description of the same idea.\r
+\r
+I did some experiments at one point and determined that doing this would\r
+make '*' far too painful to be usable with large search-result buffers,\r
+(which is precisely when I am most likely to use it).\r
+\r
+But even if we were willing to accept the performance penalty, (or if we\r
+fixed notmuch-search-*-tag-region to accumulate the thread IDs and make\r
+a single invocation of notmuch to avoid the performance penalty). Even\r
+then, there would still be race conditions here, (though more subtle\r
+than the current race).\r
+\r
+At that point we would only be acting on threads that matched the\r
+original search, but we could be acting on more messages than were\r
+originally presented to the user.\r
+\r
+For example, a thread might have been displayed as having only one post,\r
+but the "* -inbox" operation would remove the inbox tag from any replies\r
+received in the interim.\r
+\r
+I'd love to find some clean solutions here, as I would love notmuch to\r
+offer an interface that is free of these race conditions, (which are\r
+scary since they can prevent a user from seeing some mail).\r
+\r
+Personally, I'm avoiding all races right now by only running "notmuch\r
+new" manually, (and not otherwise interacting with notmuch while\r
+"notmuch new" is running). This does avoid the races, but is fairly\r
+awkward, (I have to manually run this (or use the annoyingly blocking\r
+'G'[*] binding), so I would prefer the ability to have new mail\r
+incorporated automatically as it arrives.\r
+\r
+Independent of this particular race condition, having something like\r
+fetchmail automatically invoke "notmuch new" also has the potential to\r
+break your mail client with Xapian Database-modified exceptions.\r
+\r
+So we do need some more direct support for this mode of operation.\r
+\r
+In the meantime, I've at least updated the TODO note a bit:\r
+\r
+ Fix '*' to work by simply calling '+' or '-' on a region\r
+ consisting of the entire buffer, (this would avoid one race\r
+ condition---while still leaving other race conditions---but\r
+ could also potentially make '*' a very expensive operation).\r
+\r
+=2DCarl\r
+\r
+[*] notmuch-search-poll-and-refresh-view\r
+\r
+=2D-=20\r
+carl.d.worth@intel.com\r
+\r
+--=-=-=\r
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+--=-=-=--\r
projects / notmuch-archives.git / commitdiff