Re: [Fetchmail-users] 2 feature requests for 7.x

[Martin K. <mk...@gm...>]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2014, Matthias Andree wrote:
> Am 10.09.2014 um 10:47 schrieb Martin Koeppe:
>
>> IMO all these SSL related options should be server options, not user
>> options, as they apply before any user name is transmitted to the
>> server, so there should be no need have it configured differently for
>> every user. Ok, the server could behave diferently after user logon
>> depending on the previously negotiated connection. But then I could
>> have 2 different poll sections for the same server.
>
> I have always wondered if we should be adding some notion of scope to
> settings, but this would then have to go along with parenthesizing
> (perhaps using curly braces) of some form, perhaps apply defaults ... to
> ... end defaults statements.
>
> Sooner or later I will have to rewrite the bison parser because it
> invariably must leak memory and has some minor quirks, but have not
> decided on a solution.


If you need to / want to do some incompatible changes anyway, why not 
switch to a totally different config file format? The one that 
bind uses (basically C like) would be my favorite. With the C-style 
/* multi-line comments */ the skip keyword isn't needed anymore IMO.
Also powershell comments would be ok: "#" for single line, "<#" start 
comment, and "#>" end comment.

Then a config could look like this:

{
 	server = "pop.example.com"
 	ssl = "none"

 	poll {
 		user = "pop-server-user"
 		pass = "SECRET"
 		sendto = "user@domain.local"
 	}

 	/* nested defaults */
 	{
 		ssl = starttls
 		sendto = "user2@domain.local"
 		poll {
 			user = "user2"
 			pass = "123456"
 			verbose = yes // to debug this particular poll
 		}

 		poll {
 			user = "user3"
 			pass = "7890"
 			keep = yes // overwrite default
 		}
 		// continue nested defaults block
 		keep = no
 		fetchall = yes
 	} // end of nested defaults block
}
{
 	server = "another.server.com"
 	poll {
 		/* ... */
 	}
}

There are 2 types of blocks, default blocks (unnamed above) which can 
be thought as inner tree nodes, and poll blocks (leaf nodes). The 
whole file can be thought of being in a big default block (root node), 
where the compiled-in defaults are listed. No limit for the nesting 
level. Poll blocks must not contain any other blocks. A poll is done 
for each poll block.

No difference between server and user options, as it may be desirable 
to move e.g. the account name used on several servers to a default 
block. The poll block must just have enough options in it and above 
in the tree to do the poll.


A minimal config for only one account could just look like:
poll {
 	server = "servername"
 	user = "user"
 	pass = "*"
 	sendto = "loc@l"
}

Or even like this:

server = "servername"
user = "user"
pass = "*"
/* sometimes the same password is used for several accounts */
sendto = "loc@l"
poll {}


I only use fetchmail for POP3 polls with single-drop. So maybe not all 
of fetchmail's functions can be covered with this. Block names and 
option names can be changed of course. A ";" like in C might be 
appended to each line. Or, as in powershell, is optional, unless you 
want to specify 2 options on one line, where you could delimit both of 
these with a ";". OTOH if there are multi-line values 
(certificates?), then always a terminating ";" might be good, unless 
the block ends anyway.

Just as an idea.

Martin