isync-devel

Access to maildir mirror via Dovecot

[Stefan M. <mo...@ir...>]

I have a question regarding compatibility with Dovecot.
The `mbsync` manpage says:

    Maildir++ - Inbox/.top.sub.subsub and  Inbox/..sub.subsub  (this
    style is compatible with Courier and Dovecot - but note that the
    mailbox metadata format is not compatible).  Note that  attempts
    to set Path are rejected in this mode.

This comment on the one hand suggests that `Maildir++` is the option that's
most compatible with Dovecot yet it also suggests that there are still
incompatibilities.  What are the incompatibilities?
What kind of problems should I expect if I was to try and access my
Maildir mirror via Dovecot?


        Stefan

Re: Access to maildir mirror via Dovecot

[Oswald B. <osw...@gm...>]

On Tue, Jan 07, 2020 at 11:32:08AM -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>This comment on the one hand suggests that `Maildir++` is the option 
>that's most compatible with Dovecot
>
presumably (never tried myself).

>yet it also suggests that there are still incompatibilities.  What are 
>the incompatibilities?
>What kind of problems should I expect if I was to try and access my
>Maildir mirror via Dovecot?
>
i actually don't know; feel free to investigate, experiment, and report 
your findings.
they key is that it's impossible to implement an imap-compatible or even 
performant mailbox with pure maildir, so everyone has their private meta 
data and possibly caches.  unless mbsync happens to be 100% compatible 
with dovecot's data (which seems unlikely, to say the least), the best 
case would be that the two access schemes simply don't see each other, 
while the worst case is that they destroy each other's data.

Re: Access to maildir mirror via Dovecot

[Konstantin K. <ko...@bs...>]

On Tue, Jan 07, 2020 at 07:15:53PM +0100, Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:

> This comment on the one hand suggests that `Maildir++` is the option
> that's most compatible with Dovecot
> yet it also suggests that there are still incompatibilities.  What are
> the incompatibilities?
> What kind of problems should I expect if I was to try and access my
> Maildir mirror via Dovecot?

Stefan, just in case you did not know, Dovecot comes with its own tool
for synchronizing its mailboxes, called dsync.

It's not that flexible as isync but works and is native.

Basically it' able to either synchronize two folders for a single user
on the same filesystem or talk to a dsync on a remote host via SSH.