Andrew Large <andrew(_dot_)large(_at_)openwave(_dot_)com>:
I'm doing a pop3 fetch with "uidl" and "keep" (I dual-pop to my
Linux box and Outlook on my laptop. I have a "delete after 3 days"
rule in Outlook).
I've noticed that ~/.fetchids doesn't get updated until the entire
pop is complete. Is there any reason why in my particular
situation? The problem is that I sometimes have a big stack of
messages to pop and also have a relatively flaky ISDN connection.
If I get 95% of the messages downloaded but lose the link, I also
lose track of the fact that I successfully downloaded the 95% of the
messages that I did (so a later run of fetchmail will result in
duplicate downloads).
I can see the rationale for holding off on writing the IDs when you
are going to delete from server, but when using "keep" is there any
particular reason? Is there any way of changing this behavior? I
looked in the code, but didn't see any obvious short-cuts for
writing to the .fetchids file in real-time. Is this is an artifact
of implementation rather than explicit policy? If so, any chance of
getting a patch? If a patch is out, any pointers for what I need to
do in my local source tree?
This is an artifact of the implementation. There is no known patch.
I might accept one if you want to try writing it...but the UIDL code is
hideously fragile. You'd need to show me that you had tested very
thoroughly first.
--
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>