Re: [Exim] Washington mbx again

> Yes, but shouldn't Exim be using the c-client library to manage access
> to MBX mailboxes? I know that is a lot of overhead, but it guarrentees
> that it works right. See my other e-mail with a quote from Marc Cripin
> about various MBX issues.

Now that is a disgusting thought. Ergh. Have any of the people advocating
c-client actually read the code ? No ? Thought not. It's crap. That is a
professional opinion - as a fixer of problems.

Some may have seen my whinging and claims, and I don't want to waste peoples
valuable time, but... I started with a version of UW-IMAP - dunno which one,
since Mark Crispin appears not to understand the benefit of version
numbering in an open source environment. Anyhow, throwing away 90% of the
code left me with a working IMAP/POP3 server that is stable, interworks with
Exim and is generally OK for small scale use. What was the other 90% of the
code for ? I have no idea, except for the 20 mailbox formats I threw out. My
code now only supports mbx by default, and contains support for mbox, but
somewhere I broke it :(

(This is the code that does "if (c[0] == 'S' && c[1] == 'E' && ...)" - you
get the idea...

This doesn't matter, because during this hackfest I learnt enough about
IMAP4rev1 and mbx and the rest to get me going to start a new server from
scratch. That effort got halted about 2 months ago due to work (money
earning) obligations, but I have a strong intent to finish it. What's new ?
mmap() support for mbx files for one. I have no idea how I will address the
locking correctly yet, but that will happen. I intend to use "modern" coding
techniques and while I am giving the nod to portability, I intend to use
many of the coding practices picked up through my incolvement with OpenBSD
to try tpo make this thing robust, reliable and secure. I hope. Code will be
avilable as soon as the parse rfc822 stuff is done. The things that will not
work until last are "SEARCH" and support for other mailbox formats. I am
looking at various modules for "loadable" (whether compile or dynamic)
support. Apache 2.x looks nice, but the code vase is huge.

Oh, the reason why Mark Crispin doesn't get on with many people ? Try
contructive critisism sometime on one of "his" lists.

Anyhow, once I have finished my IPsec learning, I will get back to the code.
If anyone has a great idea for a mailbox format that could be done in both
an IMAP (IMAP before POP) server and exim, drop me a line. We should work
together on it. What I want is an NFS safe, multi-access safe, high
performance system, but without a "black box" solution (i.e. no cyrus et
al.).

Peter