I've been working on adding an IMAP implementation to the Geronimo
javamail implementation and need an opinion on how to approach
compatibility with the Sun IMAP implementation.
The Sun version of IMAP includes a number of extensions that are above
and beyond what's defined by the javamail API. For example, the
IMAPFolder class provides a QUOTA and ACL extensions. To take advantage
of these methods, you must cast the Folder instance to a
com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPFolder instance. Details are documented here:
http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/javadocs/com/sun/mail/imap/IMAPFolder.html
The ACL extensions also require the use of additional classes that are
part of the com.sun.mail.imap package. For example,
com.sun.mail.imap.Rights.
These extensions are all labeled as "experimental" and "use at your own
risk, they may change".
Adding these extensions should be no big deal, although the same
extensions implemented for Geronimo will not be compatible with the Sun
version because we won't be using the com.sun.mail.imap package for any
of the class names.
So, how far should we be going to be compatible with the Sun
implementation? Should the Geronimo implementation stick to just what's
defined in the API, or should we implement all of the what Sun has
implemented, even though we can't be 100% compatible because of the
package name diferences? I don't have strong feelings either way. The
amount of code involved to implement these additional features is not
large, so I'm willing to go either way. Do we have any precedents for
something like this, or are we entering new territory?
Rick
