[Vmail-discuss] IMAP and vmail-sql

[Chris Lightfoot]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 10:40:35AM +0000, Paul Warren wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 11:23:12AM +0100, Marcin Sochacki wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 09:09:00AM +0000, Paul Warren wrote:

> > >  Any IMAP server that did support it would be fairly restricted
> > > - only one mail folder - so there wouldn't be much of a gain over using
> > > POP3.
> > 
> > Why limit to only one mailfolder? One could have the server create
> > folders like this:
> > $folder_path = $mailbox_path . '@' . $folder_name;
> > e.g. my login is 'wanted' and I have to folders: Sent and Trash:
> > /var/mail/example.com/wanted@Sent
> > /var/mail/example.com/wanted@Trash
> > '@' can be changed to some other character if you want.
> 
> Yes, this much is not impossible to overcome, but requires the
> cooperation of the IMAP server.

Indeed. It might be preferable to do this with actual
directories, in fact. But either is a possibility.

> > > We've talked over the possibilities of doing virtual IMAP accounts a few
> > > times, but have never come to any stunningly good solutions.
> > 
> > Writing a new IMAP server seems to be quite a big task. But maybe just
> > adding support for Vmail to some existing IMAP daemon is not that
> > difficult?  Even if it's not as pure solution as writing one from scratch,
> > it might be very useful feature for ISPs.
> 
> We considered this.  There are a few problems:
> 1. We don't want to ever touch the wu-imapd code again.  It stinks.

Plus, it's non-free, slow, and not sufficiently secure for
this purpose. (I'm not a free-software fascist, but if I'm
going to put a lot of effort into modifying something like
that, I'd better be able to distribute more than just a
patch....)

I've been thinking about how a timapd ought to be
constructed, and have a reasonable idea of how to do it
properly. However, the IMAP spec is huge, and a good
fraction of it needs to be implemented in order to make a
worthwhile server, so this is not a trivial task.

-- 
 ``Note that you do not need a parachute to sky-dive.
   You need a parachute to sky-dive twice.''