On Wed, 04 Sep 2002 14:52:03 -0600, Nick Couchman wrote:
> I have read the UW position on it being more susceptible
> to file corruption, however the argument for maildirs is that they aren't as
> susceptible to this corruption because you aren't storing all your mail in
> one big file or even a few big files perhaps representing your folders.
I don't know where you read that as "the UW position", but that is not the
issue. From the UW IMAP FAQ:
It is technically difficult to support maildir in IMAP while
maintaining acceptable performance, robustness, following the
requirements of the IMAP protocol specification, and following
the requirements of maildir.
No one has succeeded in accomplishing all four together. I've
looked at the various maildir drivers offered as patches, and
they all have these problems. The problem is exacerbated
because this implementation supports multiple formats;
consequently this implementation can't make any performance
shortcuts by assuming that all the world is maildir.
I do not believe that I can do a better job than the maildir
fan community has done with their maildir drivers. Similarly,
if the maildir fan community provides the maildir driver, they
take on the responsibility for answering maildir-specific
support questions. This is as it should be, and that is why
maildir support is left to the maildir fan community.
I will add that there is another server which offers acceptable performance
with maildir, but at the cost of violating the requirements of the IMAP
protocol specification (many IMAP clients do not work with it) and the
requirements of the maildir format.
