Re: Rmail-mbox branch

[Paul Michael Reilly]

Chong Yidong wrote:
> Paul Michael Reilly <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > For now, I just committed a bunch of "pmail*.el" files in lisp/mail
> > that will allow developers to test Rmail/mbox using M-x pmail.
> >
> > My long term goal is to replace my use of Thunderbird with Rmail/mbox
> > as the first step.  The next step is to test Rmail/mbox using imap via
> > Gnu Mailutils (for the movemail/imap support) so my Rmail/mbox testing
> > will be geared very much to my day-day use of email, rather than
> > specific test cases.  A good thing, I think.
>
> Thanks for working on this.
>
> It may not be feasible to get imap working with rmail in time for Emacs
> 23.1; better to finish up the mbox support, to give enough time for
> testing/bugfixes.  How long do you want to wait before replacing the old
> rmail?  Say, a couple of weeks?

Here's my conundrum.  I'm married to IMAP, for better or worse.  I have 
my mail on a very reliable RAID5, backed up, fast server.  One under my 
control.  So my day-day use of email revolves around using Thunderbird 
to access this mail.  Even though I map Thunderbird editing to Emacs, I 
much prefer the Rmail interface.  That's why I'm putting the effort into 
Rmail/mbox.  It's a step to having email my way.

If I'm using Rmail/mbox to access my daily dose of email, it's getting a 
lot of testing and bug fixing from me, for sure.  If not, then not.  I 
could respond to bug reports and dribble out test cases as needed but 
that will, IMHO, prolong the drip, drip, drip of the Rmail/mbox saga.

> I would suggest making the switch sooner rather than later, so that it
> gets as much testing as possible.

This is your call.  Richard seems to feel it is low risk, i.e. that 
Rmail/mbox is basically there.  I was aghast when I executed M-x pmail 
and it actually worked.  Imagine.  So Richard could well be right.  He 
has a knack for that.

But my considered opinion is that switching BEFORE some small number of 
developers (could be 1) is using Rmail/mbox as their production mail 
client is fraught with the risk of introducing lots of bugs.  I'm more 
than willing to be one of those developers but not without basic access 
to IMAP to fetch the mail.  I don't need extensive support, especially 
committed (as in checked-in) support, i.e. using both Thunderbird and 
Rmail simultaneously works for me.  I think getting that basic support 
is as simple as building MailUtils movemail and configuring it for use 
with Rmail as an inbox.  Two days if that.  Then a couple of weeks of 
intensive testing (daily use) makes all the sense in the world to me. 
At that point my comfort level is high to make the switch.  Sound like a 
plan to you?

The parts of the merge that were deferred were mostly around spam 
filtering and Babyl<-->mbox conversion.  I'll revisit those deferred 
changes this week.  The lisp/mail/mbox-changes/*.changes files contain 
more details on what was deferred.

-pmr