Re: RMAIL file locking problem?

[Richard Stallman]

    As far as I can tell, it is the following code:

                      (if file-name
                          (rmail-insert-inbox-text files nil)
                        (setq delete-files (rmail-insert-inbox-text files t)))

Ok, it seems natural that this would lock the current buffer.
It is trying to insert something.

    On my machine the locking trouble seems to happen when there is no new
    mail.  My understanding is that RMAIL reads in the contents of the
    (empty!) mailbox (by the way, would it make sense to check for 0
    length and just skip the rest of jumping through hoops in this
    case---no locking, no inserting of zero bytes, no testing for having
    inserted zero bytes?)  

It seems strange that insert-file-contents would leave the buffer
locked if it does not really change the buffer.  That could be a bug
in insert-file-contents: that it handles the zero-size case wrong.