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Re: [Nmh-workers] indexing

2011-02-07 16:55:54
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2011 12:23:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon(_at_)orthanc(_dot_)ca>

Paul, you should take a look at how the CMU Cyrus IMAP server organizes
it's on-disk message store.  It's pretty much an MH folder tree with a
per-folder index and cache of useful headers.

yes, i saw that.  dovecot has something similar.  however, i need to be
able to pick, refile -link, rmm, and stuff like that.  and, i'm
fundamentally itchy about using an imap server's internal representation
since i like to imagine imap as an access method rather than as a closed
ecosystem.

Adding the index/cache files to the native MH file store would make
most MH commands blazingly fast, the obvious benefits being to scan
and pick.

This would also provide a good foundation for allowing nmh to be a
powerful disconnected-mode IMAP client.

I did a very crude proof-of-concept nnh with IMAP back in the Esys
days. It's certainly doable.

based on the generally positive response i got last night and on the fact
that a stomach flu has kept me glued to my desk today, i discovered the
add-hook, del-hook, and ref-hook profile elements added for 'grokmail' in
2002, and i've written some C that is now maintaining mhindex.db files in
each of my folders.  no changes to MH itself as yet, and i'm just storing
UID mappings so far not full RFC822 headers.  but i have UID's that an
imap server could use, and it looks promising.

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