Protocol implementations

[Emre Birol]

IMAP protocol implementation has its own internal thread to manage
server connections. This mechanism allows UI to be responsive while IMAP
layer executes server commands. As I understand it this is not the case
for POP3 and NNTP implementations. Does anybody know how UI stays
responsive while they execute server operations? does it use the timer
to mimic a state machine?

[David Bienvenu]

For POP3, NNTP and SMTP, the network i/o happens on a necko thread, and
necko notifies the UI thread when there's data available to read from
the stream. In that OnDataAvailable code, we call into the relevant
state machine code (NNTP, POP3, or SMTP).

- David

[Gervase Markham]

Emre Birol wrote:
> IMAP protocol implementation has its own internal thread to manage
> server connections. This mechanism allows UI to be responsive while IMAP
> layer executes server commands.

You say that, but I currently have a bug which I see regularly. It seems
like the IMAP connection times out, and when I click "Get New Messages",
the entire UI freezes for 30 seconds before the operation starts. Could
be DNS, I suppose. When I have more info I'll file a bug.

Gerv

[Peter Weilbacher]

I see that regularly at home. I think my provider disconnects me
whenever there hasn't been any traffic for a while, like when I'm away
from the machine and it goes into APM sleep. When I come back the
connection is back up very quickly (probably with a different IP address)
but then I see the same UI freeze when I access my IMAP accounts the first
time afterwards.
Not sure that is connected to Gerv's problem and I didn't try to time it
but it could be around 30s.

Cheers,
Peter.

[Emre Birol]

Protocol logging can provide more information to understand the cause of
the problem. See http://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Logging.

This is also good time to file a bug since we attack to imap problems
these days.