Since this is shaping up to be a hot topic, here are some clarifications
which may avoid "me too" postings...:
(1) I understand, acknowledge, and sympathize with your desire for a tool
that will convert a user's mailboxes from one format to another without
client-visible changes.
(2) mailutil is not that tool, and will not be that tool:
(a) mailutil functions as designed. mailutil *copies* a mailbox or
hierarchy of mailboxes from a source to a destination. It preserves
message data and system flags. If -kwcopy is specified, it will also
preserve keywords (a.k.a. "user flags").
(b) mailutil does not preserve recent state or UID information. It
is IMPOSSIBLE to do this over IMAP. All messages in the destination
will be marked as recent and have a new UID regime.
(3) It is also generally impossible to convert formats to mix without at
least the change from single-use to dual-use being visible to the client.
The exception is if the source mailboxes are in the rarely-used mh or mx
formats.
(4) The same transition issues also come about if you convert to a
different server (e.g., Cyrus) implementation. I don't know of any server
that will invisibly convert all your UW imapd mailboxes to its format with
full preservation of all mailbox and message metadata. That doesn't mean
that there isn't any such server; I just don't know about it.
Now...with all of the above in mind...
I have added a tasklist item for a tool that will do conversion-to-mix
with full metadata preservation. It will not be mailutil, nor will it
convert to formats other than mix.
I can't promise when I will deliver such a tool, but I've heard the
requests loud and clear.
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
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