Optimizing for frequent indexing

[Oli Sturm]

Hi,

New mu user here. I have an email folder that includes two Maildir hierarchies current and old. I created one index for everything since it seems easier to deal with, especially in mu4e.

I run a script that uses mbsync to update the current Maildir, while the old part doesn’t change. After the mbsync run I want to update the index, and this takes longer than I’d like. I also noticed that the behavior in terms of system load is a bit peculiar.

When I run mu index --muhome=/mufolder, this counts to the number of messages in all folders in around 17 seconds while the mu process consumes around 32% CPU. Then it sits there for another 28 seconds doing nothing I can see, while the mu process consumes 65% CPU. Total time is around 44 seconds.

When I run mu index --muhome=/mufolder --lazy-check, the first part is much quicker, almost instantaneous in fact - but after that the process still sits there for another 28 seconds doing nothing, while the mu process consumes 65% CPU. Total time is just over 28 seconds.

The mysterious bit is what mu does in those 28 seconds. I tried passing -v but there’s no extra output. Is there a way to optimize this behavior?

Thanks
Oli

[Oli Sturm]

Hi,

Update: I found the culprit, it is the clean-up process. Disabling it with the --nocleanup flag solves the problem. I noticed that all the multi-gigabyte xapian index files seemed to be touched during every run, so I’m glad this flag exists!

Thanks for reading, hope this update is useful to someone else.
Oli