compiling first time

[Rob Pyott]

I'm going to give it a shot! Two questions:

-- Should I compile with Maildir patch? What's the purpose of it? (I've read about it on Eduardo's site but I'm still not clear.)
-- any other recommended configurations?

Thanks! Rob

[Carlos E.R.]

On 15/02/2021 20.19, Rob Pyott wrote:
> I'm going to give it a shot! Two questions:
>
> -- Should I compile with Maildir patch? What's the purpose of it? (I've read about it on Eduardo's site but I'm still not clear.)

It is about how your mail is stored on your home directory.

It can be one file per folder (mbox format), or one file per message
(maildir). There are pros and cons on each. How you retrieve and process
email are things to consider before taking a decision.


In Linux, you can further "complicate" things by not having Alpine store
mail itself, but passing the job to a local imap server. In that case,
the choice of mail archive format is passed to another program, but you
gain the advantage of being able to access the same folders with any
mail client you wish - say Alpine and Thunderbird.

That is what I do. My dovecot (imap) server uses mbox.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Henning Hucke]

On 2021-02-15, Carlos E.R. <robin_...@es.invalid> wrote:


> On 15/02/2021 20.19, Rob Pyott wrote:
>> I'm going to give it a shot! Two questions:
>>
>> -- Should I compile with Maildir patch? What's the purpose of it? (I've read about it on Eduardo's site but I'm still not clear.)

> [...]

> It can be one file per folder (mbox format), or one file per message
> (maildir). There are pros and cons on each. How you retrieve and process
> email are things to consider before taking a decision.

Even more it depends heavily on circumstance. Or spelled another way:
There is no such thing as a global optimum - No ly! Mathmatically proovable.

If you for instance use an NFS mounted filesystem its quite advicable to
use maildir by which you avoid file locking race conditions.

> In Linux, you can further "complicate" things by not having Alpine store
> mail itself, but passing the job to a local imap server. In that case,
> the choice of mail archive format is passed to another program, but you
> gain the advantage of being able to access the same folders with any
> mail client you wish - say Alpine and Thunderbird.

Don't intermix things please. There is always some kind of local storage
even if it is a database or database kind of thing (see courier) or a
"mail access protocol" is used (IMAP, POP3).

And even Outlook and Thunderbird do some kind of (partial) local mirroring
of the remote IMAP/MAPI folders.
So there is nothing special with Linux.
Alpine is even better concerning this aspect since it is a pure IMAP
client if you use IMAP (meaning: it doesn't mirror things localy).

> [...]

Regards
Henning
--
How many bits would a BitBlit blit if a BitBlit could blit bits?
-- macan...@waves.pas.ti.com in <1993Nov16...@waves.pas.ti.com>

[Carlos E.R.]

On 16/02/2021 11.31, Henning Hucke wrote:
> On 2021-02-15, Carlos E.R. <robin_...@es.invalid> wrote:
>> On 15/02/2021 20.19, Rob Pyott wrote:
>>> I'm going to give it a shot!  Two questions:
>>>
>>> -- Should I compile with Maildir patch?  What's the purpose of it? 
>>> (I've read about it on Eduardo's site but I'm still not clear.) 
>> [...]
>> It can be one file per folder (mbox format), or one file per message
>> (maildir). There are pros and cons on each. How you retrieve and process
>> email are things to consider before taking a decision.
>
> Even more it depends heavily on circumstance. Or spelled another way:
> There is no such thing as a global optimum - No ly! Mathmatically
> proovable.
>
> If you for instance use an NFS mounted filesystem its quite advicable to
> use maildir by which you avoid file locking race conditions.

Interesting.

>
>> In Linux, you can further "complicate" things by not having Alpine store
>> mail itself, but passing the job to a local imap server. In that case,
>> the choice of mail archive format is passed to another program, but you
>> gain the advantage of being able to access the same folders with any
>> mail client you wish - say Alpine and Thunderbird.
>
> Don't intermix things please. There is always some kind of local storage
> even if it is a database or database kind of thing (see courier) or a
> "mail access protocol" is used (IMAP, POP3).

But Alpine doesn't.

>
> And even Outlook and Thunderbird do some kind of (partial) local
> mirroring of the remote IMAP/MAPI folders.
> So there is nothing special with Linux.
> Alpine is even better concerning this aspect since it is a pure IMAP
> client if you use IMAP (meaning: it doesn't mirror things localy).

Exactly :-)

--
Cheers, Carlos.