Re: RMAIL mbox development

[Paul Michael Reilly]

Chong Yidong wrote:
> Per RMS's request, we're going to try to include Rmail-mbox in Emacs 23.
> It may not be ready in time for the feature freeze, but we'll make a
> special exception for it.  In other words, the new Rmail features may be
> added to the trunk during the bug-fixing/pretest period.
>
> Paul Michael Reilly <address@hidden> has been working on the Rmail-mbox
> code, but he needs help.  If you have the time to work on this, please
> email him.
Some of the big impediments to getting the mbox branch code "finished", 
IMHO, have been a) getting and using the branch itself just to do the 
necessary testing --- a pain in the butt; b) the risk of using it only 
to find out it's not ready for prime time and now how do I get back to 
Babyl...; c) testing feature A only to find out a pre-requisite feature 
 also needs a lot of work.  And did I mention that it is a CVS branch?

So I've taken a new tack; creating a sibling directory to 
"emacs/lisp/mail" called "mbox" which contains a copy of the latest 
files from the "mail" directory in the rmail mbox branch partially 
merged with the appropriate changes from the trunk.  Some changes have 
been deferred (converting to Babyl and supporting SPAM filtering).  I'll 
revisit these after the basic code is running (renamed to "pmail").  The 
goal is to be able to run both Rmail/Babyl and Pmail/mbox simultaneously 
from the trunk until it is plainly clear that we can remove Rmail/Babyl 
and replace it with the mbox code.

-pmr