At the instigation of some proponents, I am bringing the attached working group charter proposal to the IESG. Short version: the proposal is to develop a Proposed Standard for an IMAP MOVE protocol extension, which will most likely support only UID MOVE, and to do it on a very short schedule. An initial proposal for such a protocol is here: http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-gulbrandsen-imap-move/ ...and that's a likely starting point for the working group.
Again: a very short schedule. We have a good starting proposal and a fairly simple task (but see below), along with several implementations that are asking for this. The discussion and progress will be tightly managed. Note that this proposal comes with some controversy -- mostly, but not entirely, based on opinions that it's not really needed nor necessary, and that it's not as easy to get it right as some think. See the (long) thread of discussion from the imap-protocol mailing list that starts here: http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/pipermail/imap-protocol/2010-June/001088.html Comments on the charter proposal are welcome, and should be posted to this list, <[email protected]> (and no need to CC me). The charter will be on the 7 June IESG telechat for initial review, and will be back on 21 June for possible approval. Barry Leiba, Applications AD
IMAP MOVE extension (imapmove) Chair(s): TBD Applications Area Director(s): Pete Resnick <[email protected]> Barry Leiba <[email protected]> Mailing Lists: General Discussion: [email protected] To Subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/imap5 Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/imap5/ Description of Working Group: The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), defined in RFC 3501, specifies a protocol for transferring email messages between a server that implements a message store, and a client. It also includes commands for manipulating the message store -- creating, deleting, and renaming mailboxes, adding a message to a mailbox, and copying messages from one mailbox to another. It's often the case that an IMAP client needs to move (not copy) messages from one mailbox to another. The mechanism that IMAP provides to do that is a multi-step process: 1. Copy the messages from the source mailbox to the target mailbox. 2. Flag the original messages in the source mailbox as deleted. 3. Expunge the deleted messages from the source mailbox. Implementors have long pointed out some shortcomings with this approach. Because the moving of a message is not an atomic process, interruptions can leave messages in intermediate states. Because multiple clients can be accessing the mailboxes at the same time, clients can see messages in intermediate states even without interruptions. If the source mailbox contains other messages that are flagged for deletion, the third step has the side effect of expunging more than just the set of moved messages. And servers with certain types of back-end message stores might have efficient ways of moving messages, which don't involve actual copying of data. Such efficiencies are often not available to the copy/flag/expunge process. The IMAP MOVE extension (imapmove) working group has the single task of developing an atomic IMAP MOVE command that will move a set of messages from a source mailbox to a target mailbox in a single operation. The group will use draft-gulbrandsen-imap-move as a starting point, and will produce a Standards Track document. As part of the protocol development, implementation experience on both the client and server side is highly desireable, so that the actual operational value of this extension can be assessed. The working group will document the results of this experience on the working group wiki. No other IMAP extension work is in scope for this working group. Milestones 07/2012 Initial adoption of IMAP MOVE protocol document 07/2012 Establishment of implementation tracking on the working group wiki 08/2012 Initial assessment of implementation results 09/2012 Final report on implementation results 10/2012 IMAP MOVE protocol document to IESG as Proposed Standard
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